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State of Tamil Nadu rep by Secretary to Govt (Home) v. Promod Kumar IPS & Anr.

Civil Appeal · 2018 INSC 737Decided 21 Aug 2018
Civil Appeal Nos. 8427-8428 of 2018
Justice S.A. Bobde · Justice L. Nageswara Rao

Background

An IPS officer serving as Inspector General of Police in Tamil Nadu was arrested in 2012 in connection with an extortion case linked to a large investment-fraud scandal, and was placed under suspension. A disciplinary charge memo was later issued against him in 2013. He challenged both the suspension and the charge memo before the Central Administrative Tribunal, which revoked his suspension but refused to quash the charge memo; the Madras High Court subsequently upheld the revocation of suspension and separately quashed the charge memo itself, finding it had not been properly approved by the disciplinary authority. The State of Tamil Nadu appealed to the Supreme Court against both parts of that High Court ruling.

Decision Breakdown

On the charge memo, the Supreme Court held, following its earlier ruling in Union of India v. B.V. Gopinath, that the applicable disciplinary rules required the charge memo itself to be drawn up or approved by the disciplinary authority (here, the Chief Minister), and that approval merely for initiating proceedings was not enough; since that approval was never obtained for the charge memo, the High Court was right to quash it, though the State was given liberty to issue a fresh, properly approved charge memo. On suspension, the Court held that keeping an officer suspended for more than six years, with no evidence of any actual attempt to tamper with evidence or influence witnesses, was an impermissibly prolonged suspension under the Court's precedent in Ajay Kumar Choudhary v. Union of India, and upheld the direction for reinstatement (while leaving the State free to post the officer to a non-sensitive role).

Lesson Learnt

Disciplinary charge memos against government officers must be personally approved by the authority empowered to do so under the service rules, approval to merely start an inquiry is not a substitute, and prolonged suspension pending a criminal trial, without any concrete evidence of misconduct like evidence-tampering, cannot continue indefinitely.

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

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