Material evidentiary inconsistencies justifying Article 226 interference render disciplinary misconduct unproved.

The petitioner, a DTC conductor employed since 1978, was charged with failing to issue tickets to five passengers after allegedly collecting the fare while operating bus route RL-42 on 6 April 1989. Two allegedly sold tickets were also stated to have been recovered from his ticket block. Following a departmental enquiry, he was removed from service on 26 October 1990.

The Industrial Tribunal, by award dated 18 January 2005, upheld the punishment after finding that the enquiry complied with natural justice. During the writ proceedings, the petitioner died in 2022 and his legal representatives were substituted. The petitioner challenged the award on grounds including reliance on unsigned passenger statements, non-production of passenger witnesses, violation of DTC circulars, discrepancies in the challan and ticket numbers, and the fact that ₹5.20 was found short rather than in excess during cash verification.

Whether the departmental enquiry and the Tribunal’s findings were vitiated by reliance on passenger statements not countersigned by the petitioner and by non-production of the passengers as witnesses, allegedly contrary to DTC instructions.

Whether the finding of guilt was sustainable on the evidence and material inconsistencies in DTC’s case, including discrepancies in the challan, ticket numbers, cash verification, and the petitioner’s complaint regarding the checking staff.

Whether the High Court, exercising supervisory jurisdiction under Article 226 of the Constitution, could interfere with the Tribunal’s award and substitute the punishment with monetary compensation.

The Court applied the principle that jurisdiction under Article 226 is supervisory and not appellate; the High Court ordinarily will not reappreciate evidence or interfere with a plausible finding of a Labour Court unless it is perverse, arbitrary, or unsupported by evidence.

In a domestic enquiry, strict rules of evidence under the Indian Evidence Act do not apply; charges are proved on the touchstone of preponderance of probabilities, and logically probative hearsay evidence may be relied upon if it has a reasonable nexus and sufficient credibility. However, a finding unsupported by any evidence, or vitiated by arbitrariness or denial of natural justice, is open to judicial review. The Court relied principally on State of Haryana v. Rattan Singh, (1977) 2 SCC 491, which held that examination of passengers is not indispensable and that credible evidence of checking officials may sustain a finding of guilt.

It also referred to Mahesh Chand v. DTC for the principle that non-compliance with departmental instructions does not, by itself, automatically vitiate a domestic enquiry.

Although the petitioner had participated in the enquiry, cross-examined the management witnesses, and signed the proceedings, the Tribunal had confined itself substantially to the procedural fairness of the enquiry and had failed to assess whether the finding of guilt was substantively justified.

The Court accepted that passenger testimony was not legally indispensable and that departmental instructions concerning passenger statements did not automatically invalidate the enquiry. Nevertheless, the management’s evidence was weakened by several unexplained inconsistencies: the management challan contained an apparent addition concerning the alleged recovery of used tickets; the waybill closed at ticket number 97240 while the allegedly unpunched tickets bore numbers 97245–97249; and cash verification showed a shortage of ₹5.20, which was inconsistent with the allegation that the petitioner had collected fares without issuing tickets.

The absence of the petitioner’s endorsement on the passenger statements, without any explanation for the omission, further affected their reliability. The Enquiry Officer had also disregarded a complaint by passenger Ram Singh alleging that the checking staff had prevented the conductor from issuing tickets and had misbehaved with him.

On a holistic assessment, the Court held that the evidence did not establish the charge even on a preponderance of probabilities, and that the Tribunal’s failure to consider these material infirmities rendered its conclusion unsustainable.

The impugned award upholding the petitioner’s removal was therefore set aside. Considering that the petitioner had served DTC for approximately 12 years, had died during the proceedings, and that the termination dated back to 1990, the Court directed DTC to pay ₹5,00,000 as lump-sum compensation to his legal heirs within four weeks. The writ petition was allowed in those terms.