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Standard Chartered Bank v. R.C. Srivastava

Civil Appeal · 2021 INSC 574Decided 29 Sept 2021
Civil Appeal No. 6092 of 2021
Justice Ajay Rastogi · Justice Abhay S. Oka

Background

The respondent, a bank employee, was dismissed in 1991 after a departmental enquiry found him guilty of drunkenness and manhandling senior bank officers on the bank's premises, based on the testimony of three officer-eyewitnesses. The Industrial Tribunal, while accepting that the enquiry itself had been fair and proper, nevertheless re-examined the entire evidence afresh, preferred the testimony of two defence witnesses (a watchman and an ex-employee) over the three officer-eyewitnesses, and ordered the employee's reinstatement with full back wages. The Allahabad High Court upheld the Tribunal's award, prompting the bank to appeal.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that once a domestic enquiry is found to be fair and conducted in compliance with natural justice, a Labour Tribunal's power to interfere under Section 11-A of the Industrial Disputes Act is narrow: limited to checking for perversity or a complete absence of supporting evidence, not re-weighing evidence as an appellate court would. The Tribunal had wrongly applied a "proof beyond reasonable doubt" criminal-law standard instead of the correct "preponderance of probabilities" standard applicable to domestic enquiries, and its finding that the incident never happened was unsupported given the direct testimony of three officers present at the scene. The Court set aside the High Court's judgment and the Tribunal's award, upholding the dismissal, but, given that the employee had already reached retirement age and had already received substantial back-wage payments during the litigation, directed that no recovery be made of amounts already paid to him.

Lesson Learnt

Labour tribunals reviewing an employer's disciplinary enquiry cannot simply substitute their own view of the facts for the enquiry officer's findings; they may step in only where the enquiry itself was unfair or its conclusions were not supported by any evidence at all.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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