A disciplinary penalty cannot stand where the employee exercised powers validly delegated by the competent authority.

O.P. Birdi, an IP Depot Manager (Mechanical) with the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC), was charged with exceeding his disciplinary authority in certain cases.

The present application concerned one such case, for which a charge memo was issued on 18 December 1998.

The Inquiry Officer found the charges not proved; the DTC nevertheless imposed a penalty, and its Board rejected Birdi’s appeal on 31 August 2007.

In an earlier decision dated 1 November 2011, the Tribunal had found that Birdi had been authorised to deal with disciplinary cases and that selecting a few cases from the 377 he had handled to penalise him was unjustified; it set aside the relevant orders and charge sheet.

On the DTC’s petition, the Delhi High Court remitted the matter for decision on the merits of the challenge to the appellate order dated 31 August 2007, directing that limitation not be raised.

1. Whether the appellate order dated 31 August 2007, imposing or upholding a penalty against Birdi in the disciplinary case, should be set aside on the merits.

2. Whether Birdi was entitled to consequential benefits, including benefits under the ACP/MACP schemes, following the setting aside of the disciplinary action.

The Tribunal identified no statute, rule, or precedent as the basis for its decision in this order.

It relied on the earlier coordinate Bench’s findings that disciplinary action could not be sustained where Birdi had been authorised to exercise the relevant powers, the Inquiry Officer had found the charges not proved, and the selective pursuit of a small number of cases out of 377 was unjustified.

The earlier Bench also stated that the Tribunal’s role was not to reappreciate evidence but to assess whether reasonableness had been observed.

The High Court’s remand directed the Tribunal to decide the challenge to the appellate order on its merits without raising limitation.

The Tribunal treated the earlier Bench’s findings as undisturbed and noted that the High Court had confined the remand to reconsideration of the appellate order on the merits, without a limitation objection.

In light of those findings—particularly that Birdi had authority to deal with the cases and that the selective disciplinary action was unjustified—the Tribunal concluded that no further substantive adjudication was required to set aside the disciplinary action.

It directed the DTC to extend all consequential benefits, including ACP/MACP benefits, as admissible under the applicable rules and schemes, preferably within eight weeks of receiving a certified copy of the order; there was no order as to costs.