The Supreme Court held that disciplinary authorities must exercise caution before imposing dismissal from service, as such punishment severely affects employees and their dependents. The Court said dismissal should be reserved for cases involving the most serious misconduct.
The Supreme Court observed that a disciplinary authority must be cautious before imposing the harshest punishment of dismissal from service, as it has a severe impact not only on the employee but also on the employee’s dependent family members. The court said dismissal should be confined to cases involving the most serious misconduct, where “elements of synthetic consideration would be undesirable and inappropriate.”
The remarks were made by a bench of Justices Sanjay Karol and N. Kotiswar Singh while deciding an appeal filed by a woman who worked for the Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited and was dismissed from service.
The bench said,
“Dismissal is ordinarily justified where the misconduct is of such gravity that continuance of the employee would be wholly incompatible with discipline, trust or institutional functioning,”
The apex court noted that cases involving corruption, illegal gratification, moral turpitude, misappropriation, acts causing substantial loss to the employer, or conduct indicating complete unfitness for continued service are in a different category.
It further stated that where the misconduct does not relate to corruption, moral turpitude, financial misappropriation, or any proved loss to the employer and where the employee has rendered long service without significant blemish the disciplinary authority must carefully assess whether a lesser penalty would be sufficient to meet the ends of justice.
Regarding the penalty in the present case, the court said,
“With respect to the punishment of dismissal which we consider wholly disproportionate to the charges proved, the competent authority shall consider any punishment other than the ultimate penalty of dismissal from service, after considering the appellant’s long service, past record, age, nature of misconduct, absence or presence of financial loss, and other relevant circumstances”.
The Supreme Court set aside the dismissal order dated July 2017 as “wholly disproportionate,” while keeping the finding of misconduct unchanged.
It recorded that the appellant joined service in April 1985 and was placed under suspension in September 2006. The suspension order alleged acts of indiscipline and insubordination, disobedience of superior officers, tampering with official documents, and negligence.
The bench observed that the suspension continued for nearly 11 years, after which the authority passed the dismissal order in July 2017.
The court was hearing her challenge to an April 2024 verdict of the Bombay High Court’s Nagpur Bench that had upheld the dismissal.
The bench said,
“Dismissal from service is the severest form of penalty which can be inflicted on a delinquent employee in service jurisprudence. It brings the relationship of employer and employee to an end permanently, and ordinarily deprives the employee of the incidents of past service, including retiral benefits,”
It added that dismissal does not simply result in the loss of current income for the employee, but also affects the dependent family members.
The bench said,
“Thus, it will have a devastating effect not only on the dismissed employee but also on all those who are dependant on the employee,”
It said,
“Because of the severity of its impact not only on the employee but also to his dependents, the disciplinary authority must be very careful in seeking to impose the severest form of punishment of dismissal,”
The bench clarified that it was not diminishing the importance of discipline in the workplace. It said that in this case, the allegations appeared to stem mainly from internal office functioning and service-related conflict, and did not unfold in the public domain.
While allowing the appeal in part, the court also held that imposing the second punishment treating the suspension period undergone as punishment was not permissible.
Among other directions, it ordered that the competent authority must determine the service and monetary implications of the suspension period in line with the applicable regulations, including payment of subsistence allowance as per the court’s observations.
The bench directed the authority to issue, within four weeks from the date it receives the judgment, a proper show-cause notice to the appellant regarding the penalty proposed to be imposed other than dismissal, considering the gravity of the misconduct. It also said the authority must pass a reasoned order on penalty within eight weeks.
The court noted that since the appellant had already crossed the age of superannuation, no reinstatement direction could be issued at this stage.
The bench said,
“The monetary and retiral consequences, if any, shall abide by the fresh order to be passed by the competent authority in terms of this judgment and the applicable regulations,”
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