Jammu and Kashmir High Court: The Bench of Gita Mittal, CJ and Sanjeev Kumar, J. dismissed the appeal filed against the order wherein a direction to the appellants was given to consider the case of the respondent which was in relation to his unreleased salary.
The facts of the case are that the respondent (writ petitioner) was working as a daily rated worker with the appellants in the position of a Helper. The respondent was absent from duty from October 1986 and that despite issuance of a notice, he did not report for duties. The appellants claimed that the respondent submitted his resignation in 1987 which was sent to the higher authorities for instructions. However, this resignation did not culminate in any final order of acceptance. Even otherwise, the appellants were unable to support this assertion on their part for the reason that they were unable to produce any record relating to this resignation. The respondent thus disputed the fact of having given any resignation. The respondent was compelled to file a writ petition for the reason that his salary was not released.
The Court held that the appellants had not passed any formal order of termination of the services of the respondent thus the directions made in the writ petition by the impugned order were fully justified and could not be faulted on any legally tenable ground. It was also directed that for the period the respondent remained unauthorizedly absent from duty, he would not be paid salary. The appeal was thus dismissed. [Power Development Deptt. v. Javaid Ahmad Mir, 2018 SCC OnLine J&K 1047, Order dated 14-02-2019]
