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Dharam Pal vs. Delhi Transport Corporation

Writ Petition (Civil) · 2026:DHC:7883Decided 16 Sept 2026New Delhi Bench
W.P.(C) 6632/2005CNR: DLHC010714562005
Justice Amit Mahajan

Background

Dharam Pal, a DTC conductor since 1978, was removed from service in 1990 after being accused of collecting fares from five passengers without issuing tickets. The Industrial Tribunal upheld his removal, finding the enquiry procedurally proper. He (and, after his death during the case, his legal heirs) challenged this before the High Court, pointing to several specific inconsistencies in DTC's own paperwork.

Decision Breakdown

Unlike the Court's other DTC-conductor rulings that day, here it found the case against the workman genuinely unravelled on close inspection: instead of the expected excess cash, his cash was actually found short; the "used" ticket numbers recovered didn't match the numbers shown as already issued in his own waybill; a second charge (reselling tickets) appeared to have been added into one version of the paperwork but not the other; and a fellow passenger had separately complained that the checking staff had misbehaved and prevented the conductor from issuing tickets at all. Given this cluster of unexplained irregularities, the Court held DTC had failed to prove the misconduct even on the relaxed "preponderance of probabilities" standard, and set aside the dismissal. However, since the workman had since died and the case was over three decades old, the Court awarded a lump-sum compensation of ₹5,00,000 to his legal heirs instead of ordering reinstatement.

Lesson Learnt

While courts are usually reluctant to re-examine a workplace enquiry's findings of fact, a cluster of real, unexplained internal inconsistencies in the employer's own evidence, not just a missing formality, can still be enough to overturn a dismissal, even years later.

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