High court: Political interference in service matters is undesirable

Bengaluru: Political interference in service matters is undesirable, as much as irrelevant factors that impact public administration and the interest of the employer, the high court has said.
A division bench comprising Justices Krishna S Dixit and Ramachandra D Huddar made this observation while allowing a writ appeal filed by the Karnataka Food and Civil Supplies Corporation Limited (KFCSCL).
On July 12, 2002, one M Veena, junior assistant at KFCSCL, was transferred from Bengaluru to Mangaluru. It is said that without reporting for duty at Mangaluru, Veena applied for leave on medical grounds and produced a medical certificate.
KFCSCL doubted the genuineness of the medical certificate and consequently, she was examined by a Medical Board at Udupi district hospital. After the board certified that though she was suffering from dust allergy, her claim for leave was not justified, Veena was slapped with compulsory retirement in July 2004. On October 31, 2009, the Appellate Authority confirmed the order.
Following a petition from Veena, on March 20, 2013, a single bench quashed the earlier orders pertaining to compulsory retirement and ordered that the complainant be reinstated without retrospective wages. Challenging the single-bench order, KFCSCL claimed that the employee’s conduct in bringing in political influence through a member of Parliament itself disentitled her to the discretionary remedy. The employer further argued that despite direction to report for duty,Veena remained absent.
In her counter-argument, Veena claimed she was suffering from an allergy and had requested for a suitable posting elsewhere, to avoid travelling 3 km daily to work. She further said there was no facility to even answer nature’s call at the place of her posting.
After perusing the material on record, the division bench noted that ordinarily, every employee is liable to be transferred and that the transferred employee is liable to report for duty at the place of work. The bench further said any grievance about one’s place of posting can be raised only after the employee concerned has reported for work there – a fact that had completely been missed by the single bench. “Nowadays, this court has been observing that employees are invoking political influence in matters of transfer and posting, which essentially belong to the exclusive domain of the employer/competent authority,” the high court division bench added.
“The act of public servants causing political influence is a matter of deprecation and may constitute a sole ground for declining relief in constitutional jurisdiction. That a person knocking on the doors of a writ court should not have blemish-worthy conduct, hardly needs to be reiterated,” the high court said.
The benefits accruing on account of compulsory retirement should be handed over to the employee within eight weeks and she should be complying with the prerequisites thereafter, the court ruled. Any delay will entitle her to an interest at the rate of 2% monthly, the division bench observed.