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Showing contexts for: compulsory wait in Bal Krishan vs State Of Punjab on 1 July, 2015Matching Fragments
This order having been appealed against to the competent authority, the order of the Engineer-in-Chief was largely maintained but the period that was treated to be leave without pay by the Engineer-in- Chief, was reduced till 18.09.2000, i.e. the period for which the petitioner is to be treated to have been on leave without pay, was given by the appellate authority, in effect, to be from 14.08.1989 to 18.09.2000 and the period from 19.09.2000 to 16.04.2002 was ordered to be treated as "compulsory waiting period" by the appellate authority.
As already noticed earlier, in appeal, while the substantive part of the order was upheld as regards most of the period of the leave of the kind due to the petitioner, however, the appellate authority decided to treat the period from 19.09.2000 to 16.04.2002 to be a "compulsory waiting period", rather than a period of absence. The significance of these dates is that, the judgment of the Supreme Court, dismissing the appeal filed by the petitioner and his co-employees, seeking absorption in the U.T., Chandigarh, was stated to have been delivered on 19.09.2000 (as per the order of the appellate authority) and the petitioner actually joined duty on 17.04.2002.
He next reiterated that no enquiry having been held, the impugned order, though in the garb of a non-punishment order, is factually a punishment order, because the petitioner has been denied the benefits that would accrue to him, if he is considered to be on duty ever since his initial date of joining at Ferozepur/Muktsar, i.e. 01.10.1987.
14. He further submitted that, in fact, since the petitioner had joined on 01.10.1987 but was not assigned any duty, the entire period from 26.09.1987 till the date that he was allowed to join duty on 17.10.2002, would have to be treated as a "compulsory waiting period", in the same manner that the appellate authority had treated the period from 19.09.2000 to 16.04.2002 as a compulsory waiting period. As such, according to learned counsel, there could be no "splitting up" of the period from 26.09.1987 to 18.09.2000 and 19.09.2000 to 16.04.2002.
Be that as it may, since the respondent-Board itself has decided to treat the period from 19.09.2000 till the date that the petitioner actually joined duty, on 17.04.2002, as a compulsory waiting period, and has actually paid him all arrears and benefits of the said period, nothing further is being said in regard thereto.
25. The contention of Mr. Sharma, learned counsel for the petitioner, that this period cannot be dichotomized from the period from 26.09.1987 to 08.09.2000, is wholly without basis, for the reasons already given in detail, i.e. that since 1988 to 2000, the petitioner was simply taking advantage of the situation and making no attempt to actually join duty, whereas after he lost his case in the Supreme Court, he made representations on 09.10.2000, 20.10.2000 and 26.12.2000 etc., to try and join duty; and even though he actually went to Court seeking that he be actually allowed to so join only in the year 2002, the respondent-Board has still given him the benefit of two years absence for that period also, from 09.10.2000 onwards. Hence, the two periods, from 26.09.1987 to 08.09.2000 and 09.10.2000 to 16.04.2002, cannot be equated with each other for any other benefit whatsoever, other than what has already been given to the petitioner by the respondent-Board, itself.