Granting interim bail to a Sub-Inspector accused in a Prevention of Corruption Act case, the Punjab and Haryana High Court flagged a ‘deeply concerning trend’ of public servants accused of corruption being reinstated, often to the very department or jurisdiction that is the subject of the prosecution, giving them access to sensitive records and witnesses. The Court directed the Chief Secretary, Haryana to file an affidavit on the rules governing such reinstatements, and whether they require consultation with the prosecuting agency or trial court before a suspension is revoked.
The Punjab and Haryana High Court has dismissed a challenge to Haryana’s Model Online Transfer Policy, holding that a transfer is an incident of service, that an employee has no vested right to a posting of choice, and that a transfer policy is only a guideline and is not legally enforceable under Article 226. The Court found the extra marks for ‘couple cases’ where a spouse is posted in Haryana, Chandigarh or Delhi to have a reasonable nexus to the objective, and neither arbitrary nor discriminatory.
Hearing a batch of contempt petitions, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has come down hard on Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh for what it called ‘paper compliance’ with the Supreme Court’s directions in Arnesh Kumar and Satender Kumar Antil on avoiding unnecessary arrests. The Court rejected an illegible Chief Secretary affidavit, noted that Section 41A CrPC notices were being issued in the wrong format and even over WhatsApp, and summoned the SHOs of three police stations to appear with their actual records.
A BJP leader has moved the Punjab and Haryana High Court seeking criminal contempt proceedings against Cockroach Janta Party co-convener Saurav Das over an X post that, the petition alleges, imputed political motives to a recent judgment and scandalised the Court. Chandigarh: A Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader has approached the Punjab and Haryana High […]