By Rana Ajit, IANS,
New Delhi : The Supreme Court has upheld the dismissal of an Indian Air Force (IAF) officer who failed to pay his property tax on time and was stripped of his uniform and pension after his father-in-law informed on him.
A bench of Justice Arijit Pasayat and Justice Asok Kumar Ganguly upheld the ouster of IAF officer Praveen Bhatia, dismissing his contention that “the failure to submit the property returns within time could not be construed as a misconduct serious enough to warrant such a grave punishment” as compulsory retirement without the pensionary benefits.
The bench upheld the dismissal, agreeing with the IAF counsel’s argument that Bhatia’s act of filing the property tax belatedly after a gap of six years was a “conduct most unbecoming of an officer of the Indian Air Force”.
In its verdict delivered last Thursday, but released later, the apex court virtually gave the government wide discretion to include various acts of “forbidden character” as misconduct by a public servant. It observed that it may not be possible for the government to draw an exhaustive list of acts which might be termed as misconduct.
“The range of activities which may amount to acts which are inconsistent with the interest of public service and not befitting the status, position and dignity of a public servant are so varied that it would be impossible for the employer (the government) to exhaustively enumerate such acts,” said the apex court.
“It has, therefore, to be noted that the word ‘misconduct’ is not capable of precise definition,” said the bench adding that misconduct implies a forbidden act.
Ironically, Bhatia lost his job due to machinations by his father-in-law Mulkh Raj Kakkar, a government contractor, who expected his son-in-law’s help in his getting contracts from the IAF.
Commissioned in the IAF in 1973, Bhatia got married to Kakkar’s daughter in January 1986. But as he refused to help his father-in-law in getting IAF contracts, his marriage too began getting affected with Kakkar eventually lodging a complaint against him with the IAF that he used to mistreat his daughter.
In his complaints, Kakkar also divulged some other acts of omission and commission of his son-in-law, including non-payment of property taxes by him between 1981 and 1986.
The IAF refused to act on Kakkar’s complaint about Bhatia’s marital discord, saying that it was his personal matter.
But the IAF did constitute a Court of Inquiry (CoI) to probe Bhatia’s various other acts of omission and commission as divulged by Kakkar.
That CoI exonerated Bhatia on all other counts, but held him guilty of not filing property tax in time and ordered his dismissal in June 1992, when Bhatia had already served as an IAF officer for 18 years and 11 months – 13 months short of becoming eligible to get his retirement benefits.
Though Bhatia pleaded with the IAF and later with the Bombay High Court to at least make him eligible to get his retirement dues, his pleas were ignored.
Bhatia finally came to the apex court in 2006, but his dismissal for not paying the property tax has now been upheld.
(Rana Ajit can be contacted at [email protected])