Supreme Court: While hearing a set of two civil appeals under Section 31 of the Armed Forces Tribunal Act, 2007 against the Armed Forces Tribunal’s order, whereby the Appellants were dismissed from their service for adopting fraudulent means by producing false relationship certificate for recruitment under the Unit Headquarters Quota, the Division Bench of Bela M. Trivedi and Pankaj Mithal*, JJ. allowed the appeal and set aside the impugned orders.
Factual Matrix
A news item was published for recruitment in the Army under the Unit Headquarters Quota. The appellants were selected and enrolled in the Army by the Maratha Light Infantry Regimental Centre (‘MLIRC’). Nearly after three years of service, a show cause notice was issued alleging that they had obtained enrollment in the Army either based on the fake sports person certificate or false relationship certificate. After considering the reply of the persons to whom show cause notice was served, the services of about 52 of them were terminated. The candidates belonging to the category of merit sportsmen, were all reinstated. Regarding the candidates alleged of producing fake relationship certificate, about 20 persons including the appellants were terminated out of which four persons were before the Court.
The appellants challenged the common judgment and order of the Armed Forces Tribunal, Kochi (‘Tribunal’), dated 06-03-2014, whereby the Tribunal had refused to interfere with the discharge certificate, dismissing the appellants from service for adopting fraudulent means. The appellants’ prayers to reinstate them were refused.
The Appellants’ case was that they were recruited in the Army after they passed all the exams and standards; they had applied under the general category and were not recruited on priority basis as relatives of any servicemen or ex-servicemen and as such there was no occasion for them to have produced any relationship certificate. The Appellants clearly denied producing any certificate of relationship for recruitment purposes.
Analysis and Decision
The Court perused the copy of the Appellants’ applications for the recruitment and noted that it was nowhere mentioned that they had produced any relationship certificate. The Court said that the application forms clearly established that the Appellants’ applied under the general category against the surplus seats which remained unfilled after considering the priority/reserved quota for relatives of servicemen/ex-servicemen, etc. The Court also added that when the Appellants did not claim any enrollment on the basis of the relationship with the servicemen/ ex-servicemen, obviously there was no occasion for them to submit any relationship certificate.
The Court noted that the discharge certificate of the Appellants stated that they were dismissed from service under the orders of Commandant for the reason of obtaining enrollment/recruitment by fraudulent means referring to submission of fake relationship certificates. The Commandant’s order was that at the time of enrollment/recruitment in December, 2009 under the Unit Headquarters Quota at the MLIR Centre, the relationship certificates of the Appellants upon verification from records was found to be manipulated and false.
Upon perusal of the discharge certificate or the Commandant’s order, the Court said that “there was no whisper that any inquiry was conducted to ascertain or find out as to whether the Appellants had actually produced relationship certificates for the purposes of enrollment/recruitment in the Army”.
The Court said that the Tribunal had also lost sight of the crucial point that the Appellants applied under the general category and not as relatives of servicemen/ex-servicemen, hence, no alleged relationship certificate was produced, which could be held to be fake. Therefore, the Court said the core issue was missed by the authorities concerned and the Tribunal. Thus, the Court vitiated the order of discharge of the Appellants and that of Tribunal for non-consideration of the material aspect.
On the point of non-consideration of the material aspect, the Court referred to S.N. Mukherjee v. Union of India, (1990) 4 SCC 594, wherein it was held that an order passed without consideration of the material evidence, or the plea would be violative of Principles of Natural Justice and would stand vitiated for non-consideration of the relevant material, plea or the evidence. The Court also referred to Mohinder Singh Gill v. Chief Election Commr., (1978) 1 SCC 405, whereby it was laid down that the validity of the order impugned has to be tested on the basis of the reasoning contained therein and that the authorities are not supposed to supplement the same by means of extraneous material or affidavit before the Courts.
In the matter at hand, the Court said that it was not the respondents’ case ever that the vacancies on which the Appellants were recruited were only supposed to be filled up by the relatives of the servicemen/ex-servicemen and not by a general category or that the posts advertised were only for the alleged reserved category. The Court said that this defence was not taken earlier and was a subsequent improvement in their defence. The Court said that this newly taken defence is nothing but supplementing the reasoning of discharge/dismissal which was not contained in the impugned order and the same was not permissible in law in view of Mohinder Singh Gill (supra).
The Court concluded that the discharge/dismissal order of the Appellants was certainly invalid for want of non-consideration of the Appellants’ plea. Thus, the Court set aside the impugned orders. The Court allowed the appeals and held that the Appellants shall be reinstated with all consequential benefits.
[Babanna Machched v. Union of India, 2024 SCC OnLine SC 121, Decided on: 09-02-2024]
