Observing that the social objective behind providing communal reservations and relaxations cannot be frustrated by fraudulent claims, the Madras High Court has ordered compulsory retirement of a person who got appointed as a trainee in Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in 1986 by submitting a fake Scheduled Caste certificate.
Justices S. Vaidyanathan and Mohammed Shaffiq further ordered that the employee D. Ganesan, now serving as Scientific Assistant in Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR) and was on the verge of attaining superannuation, would be entitled to only 40% of the monthly pension following his compulsory retirement from service.
The judges made it clear that he would not be eligible for any other terminal benefit (such as gratuity) but for Provident Fund. They said, even the benefit of compulsory retirement need not have been given to him if the IGCAR had not taken seven long years to challenge an order passed in his favour by Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) in 2013.
The CAT had on September 6, 2013 stayed the departmental proceedings initiated against him until the disposal of a criminal case booked in 2012 for having submitted the fake community certificate. However, IGCAR filed the present writ petition before the High Court, challenging the CAT’s order, only in 2020.
Stating that the delay appeared to have occurred purely due to a fault committed by some “inefficient officer” who had allowed “an undeserving / unscrupulous element to continue in the job and receive salary all these years,” the judges, nevertheless, took a sympathetic view since Mr. Ganesan was a Presidential awardee.
The Bench pointed out that a recruitment notification issued by BARC on November 19, 1986 had categorically stated that applicants for the post of trainees in its in-plant workshops must be between 18 and 20 years of age. Then, Mr. Ganesan was 24 years old and he belonged to a Backward Class.
However, since the notification had provided for relaxation of the upper age limit by five years for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe candidates alone, he produced a fake Scheduled Caste certificate and obtained the benefit of age relaxation. Thereafter, he completed the training and got absorbed as Tradesman in 1989.
After getting promoted to the next rank, he also got transferred to IGCAR in 1992 at his request. Even in his new workplace, he got promoted on multiple occasions on merit but ended up facing a criminal case in 2012 on the basis of a complaint lodged by SC/ST employees association in the Department of Atomic Energy.
He was arrested on October 21, 2012 and obtained bail only on November 2, 2012. In the meantime, he was placed under suspension. Though the suspension was revoked after his release, the Kancheepuram District Vigilance Committee on community certificate verification found that he actually belonged to a backward class.
When disciplinary proceedings were initiated, he approached the CAT and obtained a stay to continue in service and receive salary all these years. Lamenting the grant of stay by the tribunal, the Division Bench said, it was a classic example of a case where a judicial forum should also be blamed.
“Such act of the court [tribunal] has resulted in paying benefits to an undeserving person as his entry into service itself is void ab initio... The punishment to be imposed just days before superannuation is nothing but making mockery of the system as an undeserved candidate has entered the job bypassing all other eligible SC/ST candidates,” the Bench wrote.
