High court stays departmental proceedings against retiree engineers

High court stays departmental proceedings against retiree engineers

Harshabab Sidhu
Nabaz-e-Punjab, Chandigarh, September 12:
Taking up two writ petitions filed by retirees J.S Tiwana as Divisional Engineer (Civil) and Lal Chand as Sub-Divisional Engineer(Civil) from Punjab Urban Development Authority (PUDA) challenging the issuance of Charge Sheet to them after they retired years ago; Justice Tejinder Singh Dhindsa of the Punjab and Haryana High Court has ordered that the proceedings in relation to the impugned charge sheets shall be held in abeyance while issuing Notice of Motion to the Secretary, Department of Housing & Urban Development(Punjab) besides Chief Administrator, PUDA for December 8, 2020.
The counsel for the petitioners contended that while the petitioners were posted with the Bathinda Development Authority (BDA), they remained associated with a project of developing a Commercial Pocket at Green Field Enclave, Malout that commenced in 2012 for which all the necessary approvals were granted by the higher authorities and the then Superintending Engineer, BDA was the Executing incharge of the project. The project went well and was formally completed after Tiwana and Lal Chand superannuated on 31st January 2014 and 30th September 2015 respectively. Now the Charge Sheet alleging irregularities has been issued to the petitioners in August 2020 which is in violation of the provisions of Rule 2.2 (b) of the Punjab Civil Services Rules, Volume II, Part-1 providing that no departmental proceedings can be initiated against a retired employee in respect of any event which took place more than 4 years before such initiation. The counsel further added serving of charge sheets upon the petitioners under Rule 8 of the PUDA Employees (Punishment and Appeal) Regulations 1997 is also not sustainable since the 1997 Regulations are not applicable to the retirees like petitioners and are applicable to the serving employees of PUDA.