STATE TIMES NEWS
JAMMU: The Supreme Court Bench comprising Justices Kurian Joseph and Deepak Gupta has dismissed Special Leave Petition (SLP) filed by Jammu and Kashmir Government in a compulsory retirement case of Assistant Executive Engineer (AEE) Javed Iqbal of Public Works Department (PWD) after counsel for the petitioners sought permission to withdraw the same.
The Government of Jammu and Kashmir headed by Late Mufti Mohammad Sayeed as Chief Minister in the month of June 2015 had prematurely retired 63 Government employees by invoking Article 226 (2) of J&K Civil Services Regulations on the recommendation of the high powered review committee headed by the Chief Secretary Mohd Iqbal Khanday. Subsequently, these prematurely retired employees challenged there orders in the State High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and most of these orders were quashed and State was directed to reinstate the petitioners with all consequential benefits.
Javed Iqbal Shah (AEE) was one of those employees whose orders were quashed by Justice Alok Aaradhe of Jammu and Kashmir High Court. To counter the court direction, the State Government filed letter Patents Appeal vide No. LPASW 65/2017 in State High Court, which was consequently dismissed by the Division Bench of State High Court comprising Chief Justice Badar Durrez Ahmed and Justice Tashi Rabstan vide order dated April 18, 2017. Upon this, the State Government instead of implementing the aforesaid order passed by J&K High Court filed SLP No. 17711/2017 titled State of Jammu and Kashmir versus Javed Iqbal filed a SLP before the Supreme Court.
When the case was listed for hearing on December 1, 2017, The State withdrew the SLP from the Supreme Court. And, Supreme Court dismissed the SLP of the State as withdrawn.
While dismissing the aforesaid SLP, the Apex Court directed state government to ensure that the impugned order passed by the Single Judge shall be completed within eight weeks.
The Single Judge as well as the Division Bench had observed that the service record of the employee was not considered by the review committee and mere involvement of the employee in criminal case has been taken as ground to throw him out of service which is against the settled law of the land thus the State Government has not followed the procedure and had taken a hasty decision. Advocates Ujjawal Singh, Fauzia Shakil and Mojahid Karim Khan, and AOR M. Shoeb Alam appeared for the petitioners while Senior Advocate Meenakshi Arora, Advocates Ayushman Kotwal, Pramod Kumar Sharma and Ambhoj Kumar Sinha represented the respondents.
