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State of Odisha & Ors. v. Ganesh Chandra Sahoo

Civil Appeal · 2020 INSC 29Decided 10 Jan 2020
Civil Appeal No. 9514 of 2019
Dr. Justice D.Y. Chandrachud · Justice Hrishikesh Roy

Background

A police department "Orderly" (Follower) went on sanctioned leave in 1991 to tend to his ailing mother, then failed to report back to duty or respond to repeated official summons to undergo a medical check, despite being warned of consequences. He was departmentally proceeded against ex parte and discharged from service in 1993. Years later he challenged the discharge, claiming he had been mentally incapacitated, relying on a psychiatric certificate obtained in 1998, nearly seven years after he went absent.

Decision Breakdown

The Orissa Administrative Tribunal had rejected his challenge, doubting the genuineness of the belated medical certificate, but the Orissa High Court later reduced his punishment from discharge to compulsory retirement, relying on a precedent involving a much shorter (37-day) unauthorized absence. The Supreme Court held that the High Court wrongly equated the two cases: the employee here remained absent without any contemporaneous medical proof for about seven years and had actively evaded the CDMO's medical examination ordered to verify his claim, unlike the comparator case. The Court found the certificate, obtained years later without any record of ongoing treatment, unconvincing, and held there was no procedural unfairness in the original disciplinary inquiry. It therefore set aside the High Court's order and restored the discharge, with no order as to costs.

Lesson Learnt

Belated, unsupported medical certificates produced years after the fact will not automatically excuse a long unauthorized absence from government duty, especially where the employee avoided an official medical verification offered to him at the time. Precedents involving materially different facts (such as a much shorter absence) cannot be mechanically applied to justify leniency.

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

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