The Patna High Court has quashed the State Bank of India’s decision treating a long-serving officer as having “voluntarily resigned” for staying away on medical grounds, holding that absence compelled by illness is not wilful abandonment and that the Bank acted arbitrarily and in breach of natural justice.
Patna: The Patna High Court has set aside the State Bank of India’s action treating one of its officers as having “voluntarily vacated” his post, and hence voluntarily resigned, under Rule 40(3) of the SBI Officers’ Service Rules, 1992, holding that his absence was on account of genuine illness, that the Bank had arbitrarily declined leave it had already sanctioned, and that the drastic consequence had been imposed in violation of the principles of natural justice [Pankaj Kumar Singh v. State Bank of India and Others].
Justice Harish Kumar, allowing the writ petition, quashed the two impugned notices and the appellate order, and directed the Bank to reinstate the officer with continuity of service, though it clarified that he would not be entitled to salary for the period he did not actually work.
How the dispute arose
The petitioner had joined SBI in 1989 as a Clerk-cum-Cashier and risen to Deputy Manager, with over thirty years of, on the Court’s record, unblemished service. The dispute followed his inter-zone transfer from Patna to Muzaffarpur in 2019. After reporting to the new zone, he was diagnosed with acute jaundice and advised extended rest, and applied for medical leave, which the Bank sanctioned through its HRMS portal for July 2019, paying him full salary for the period. He subsequently developed a serious orthopaedic ailment and remained on medical rest until mid-December 2019, resuming duty on being declared fit.
On reporting for duty, however, the officer was confronted with three communications: a letter of October 22, 2019 declining the very leave that had earlier been sanctioned and treating his absence as unauthorised; a notice of November 6, 2019 under Rule 40(3) directing him to report and explain his absence within thirty days, failing which he would be deemed to have voluntarily vacated his office; and a final notice of December 13, 2019 declaring that he had indeed voluntarily resigned with effect from December 7, 2019, and directing him to pay three months’ emoluments. His departmental appeal was rejected, prompting the writ petition.
Sanctioned leave cannot be arbitrarily undone
A central strand of the Court’s reasoning was that the Bank could not, without cogent reason, reverse leave it had already granted. The Court noted that the leave for July 2019 had been sanctioned through the HRMS portal and that the petitioner had been paid his full salary for that period, yet it was subsequently declined on the bare assertion that the competent authority was “not satisfied with the documentary evidence” furnished, without disclosing any reason for that dissatisfaction.
The Court held that if the authorities doubted the genuineness of the medical reports and prescriptions, they were expected to verify them through an appropriate mechanism or refer the officer to a duly constituted Medical Board, rather than reject them by ipse dixit. A mere recital of dissatisfaction “without disclosing any reason for such dissatisfaction,” it held, “amounts to an arbitrary exercise of power and cannot be sustained in the eyes of law.” The medical documents, the Court emphasised, had never been found to be false, forged or fabricated.
The scheme of Rule 40: absence must first be shown to be unauthorised
The judgment set out the correct sequence a bank must follow before invoking the “deemed voluntary resignation” power. Before the drastic consequence under Rule 40(3) can be triggered, the Court held, the authority must first determine, in light of Rule 40(2), whether the officer’s absence is in fact unauthorised or amounts to overstaying of leave. Only once that threshold is satisfied can Rule 40(3) be invoked. Here, because the foundation, that the absence was unauthorised, had itself been “materially eroded” once the sanctioned medical leave and the unexplained rejection were accounted for, the invocation of Rule 40(3) could not stand.
Relying on the Supreme Court’s decision in Krushnakant B. Parmar, the Court reiterated a principle of wide application in service law: absence resulting from compelling circumstances that make it impossible for an employee to attend, such as illness, accident or hospitalisation, cannot be treated as wilful absence. Mere absence without leave may be unauthorised, but it does not automatically follow that it is wilful, and an employee cannot, merely on account of such absence, be held guilty of a lack of devotion to duty. Given that the petitioner had, on his case, more than 270 days of earned leave to his credit and substantial sick leave, the Court observed there was no apparent reason he would have failed to respond had the first notice actually reached him.
Non-service of notice and the natural-justice failure
The Court also faulted the Bank on service of the notices. The petitioner’s recorded address in the Bank’s own records was in Patna, yet the first notice was not shown to have been served there; the Bank’s reliance on email was undercut by the fact that the petitioner’s official email account had, on his case, been blocked by the Bank itself. The Court found that the Appellate Authority had failed to examine the most material aspect, why the sanctioned leave was declined despite full salary having been paid, and had not dealt with the specific grievance of non-service at the last recorded address.
Holding that discretion vested in a statutory authority must be exercised “objectively, fairly and upon due consideration of all relevant facts,” the Court concluded that the Bank’s action did not withstand the test of fairness and reasonableness embodied in Article 14 of the Constitution, and additionally suffered from a violation of the principles of natural justice, the petitioner not having been afforded a fair and meaningful opportunity to explain his absence before being treated as having resigned.
The relief, and why the judgment matters
Quashing the two notices and the appellate order, the Court directed the Bank to reinstate the officer with continuity of service. It balanced that relief with a significant qualification: applying the familiar “no work, no pay” principle, it held that he would not be entitled to salary or allowances for the period he did not actually discharge duties, though that period would count towards continuity of service and consequential service benefits. The writ petition was allowed, with parties bearing their own costs.
The ruling is a useful restatement of the safeguards that attend “automatic” or “deemed” termination clauses, provisions under which an employee is treated as having abandoned service by remaining absent. Such clauses are attractive to employers because they appear to dispense with a full disciplinary inquiry, but the judgment makes clear that they cannot be used to short-circuit fairness: the employer must genuinely establish that the absence was unauthorised and wilful, must not arbitrarily undo leave it has already sanctioned, must properly serve notice at the recorded address, and must give a real opportunity to explain before deeming a career of decades to have ended in resignation. For salaried employees, and for the banking and public-sector workforce in particular, the decision reinforces that a long service record cannot be extinguished by an arbitrary exercise of a deeming power dressed up as a routine administrative step.
Case Title: Pankaj Kumar Singh v. State Bank of India and Others [CWJC No. 8579 of 2020]
Bench: Justice Harish Kumar, Patna High Court
Date of Judgment: September 3, 2026