The Orissa High Court has quashed the dismissal of several sanitation staff employed by the Central Bank of India, ruling that termination was disproportionately severe for workers from marginalized educational and social backgrounds. The court ordered the financial institution to reconsider the disciplinary action and explicitly barred authorities from imposing dismissal, removal, or compulsory retirement.
Delivering the judgment on September 8, Justice Biraja Prasanna Satapathy directed the bank’s appellate authority to award a lesser penalty, emphasizing that adjudicators must weigh the employees’ socioeconomic status, their limited education, and the severe loss of livelihood they endured following their ouster in 2016.
Origins of the Employment Dispute
The petitioners originally served as daily-wage safai karmachari-cum-sub staff across various Central Bank of India branches. In 2012, the lender announced a one-time regularization scheme that allowed casual and temporary employees to seek permanent positions. The workers participated in the selection exercise and secured regular appointments in 2013, presenting school certificates to satisfy age and qualification criteria at the time of joining.
Trouble began when the management initiated a verification drive with the respective academic institutions. The schools informed bank officials that the credentials had not been issued by them. Viewing the submissions as forged documentation used to obtain regular jobs, the management launched departmental inquiries against the workers.
Disciplinary Action and Legal Challenge
The domestic inquiry concluded that the sanitation workers were guilty of misconduct. Consequently, the bank served show-cause notices and discharged them from service in 2016. An internal appellate authority subsequently dismissed their departmental appeals, upholding the terminations and prompting the workers to seek relief before the High Court.
Representing the employees, Senior Advocate J. K. Rath argued that the workers had submitted the papers without understanding the legal consequences. Counsel contended that while the inquiry relied on school correspondence to establish the forgery, capital punishment in the service context was unwarranted. Given their vulnerable social standing and modest education, counsel urged that a compassionate view should have guided the disciplinary process.
The bank opposed the petition, maintaining that securing public employment through falsified credentials constituted grave misconduct that fully justified dismissal under service regulations.
Application of the Proportionality Doctrine
Justice Satapathy noted that the workers were long-serving daily-wage sanitation staff who transitioned into regular roles, a context that the disciplinary authorities ought to have weighed. The bench observed that an established infraction does not automatically demand the extreme penalty of termination, and administrative bodies must examine mitigating circumstances before stripping employees of their jobs.
Invoking the Supreme Court precedent in Ranjit Thakur v. Union of India, the High Court reiterated that administrative punishments must remain proportionate to the offense, avoiding vindictiveness or undue severity. With the dismissal orders quashed, the High Court remitted the cases to the bank’s appellate authority for the determination of an alternative, proportionate penalty.
