R.Balakrishnan vs The State Of Tamilnadu Rep. By Its on 28 November, 2012
Insofar as the contention with regard to the delay in proceeding
against the petitioner departmentally, the learned counsel for the petitioner
relied on this Court judgment in K.Deivendran v. District Collector reported in
(2012) 4 MLJ 576 to substantiate his contention that unexplained delay vitiates
the entire proceedings. In the said case, the charge memo came to be issued
after a period of 9 years and this Court noted that there was no justifiable
reason or explanation given by the respondents/department, therein and thus
found that the delay in issuing the charge memo after the period of 9 years
vitiates the entire proceedings. The case on hand is still worse. When the case
cited by the learned counsel for the petitioner shows that the charge memo was
issued after a period of 9 years, admittedly, in this case, even till today, no
charge memo has been filed against the petitioner even after a period of nearly
15 years from the time of alleged delinquency and 10 years from the date of
filing the F.I.R. and seven years from the date of suspension. On the other
hand, it is the categorical stand of the respondents that they are awaiting the
verdict of the criminal Court. Thus, in effect, there is no departmental
proceedings initiated at all even though the petitioner was placed under
suspension as early as on 25.01.2005. Consequently, the delay on the part of the
respondents certainly causes great prejudice to the petitioner's right to have
his defended effectively.