A challenge to a 20-year-old removal order is barred by limitation.

Raj Kumar, the applicant’s husband, was removed from Railway service in 2000 for unauthorised absence of 15 days.

He had reportedly been away because of his father’s illness and death.

In 2006, the Revisional Authority advised that the punishment be considered sympathetically, but no change was made to the removal order.

Raj Kumar died in 2008.

His widow later pursued representations and earlier proceedings before the Tribunal; in O.A. No. 918/2016, she was granted liberty to challenge the punishment order in accordance with law.

She filed the present application in 2020, seeking to set aside the removal order and obtain consequential benefits.

The Tribunal noted that compassionate allowance had been granted to Raj Kumar under an office order dated 7 June 2010.

Whether the widow’s 2020 challenge to the removal order dated 10 October 2000 was barred by limitation.

Whether the Tribunal should grant relief against the removal order, notwithstanding the compassionate allowance already granted to the deceased employee.

Section 19 of the Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985, provides the basis for approaching the Tribunal by application.

The Tribunal applied the principle that a challenge brought long after the impugned order may be dismissed as barred by limitation.

It also considered the compassionate allowance already granted to the employee following removal, but did not identify a specific statutory provision, rule, or precedent governing that allowance.

The removal order was made in 2000, and the employee died in 2008; the present application was filed in 2020.

The Tribunal observed that the removal order had not been challenged before a court while Raj Kumar was alive and held that the later challenge was “hopelessly barred by limitation”.

It further found that the employee’s interests had already been protected, to the extent recognised by the authorities, through the grant of compassionate allowance.

The order does not set out a separate limitation calculation or identify the governing limitation provision.

The Tribunal dismissed the application without costs.

No further relief was granted.