Granting relief to whistleblower bureaucrat Sanjiv Chaturvedi and warning the Centre against the fleeting nature of systems wherein ‘honesty is punished and corruption rewarded’, the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) has directed the latter to reconsider proceedings pertaining to his protracted struggle for an intra-service cadre change expeditiously.
This comes at a time when the Delhi Government which had sought his service in February has locked horns with the Centre over the appointments of bureaucrats.
Delivered by a Principal Bench of the CAT consisting of its Chairman Justice Syed Rafat Alam and member Dr. B.K Sinha, the said order reproduced Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore’s poem ‘Where the Mind is Without Fear’ to take a serious note of instances of harassment meted out to the 2002-batch Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer.
“...the instances of harassment cited appear to be on the extreme side and deserve to be taken serious note of...we simply take note of the averments and like to reproduce the lines of Poet laureate, Rabindranath Tagore quoted in the matter of Indian Medical Association vs. Union of India and others (2011)...'Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high/Where knowledge is free/Where the world has not broken into fragments...'” the Bench stated.
“We do hope and trust that a situation may never arise, where honesty is punished and corruption rewarded. Such a system cannot be expected to last for a long time...” the Bench stated further. The CAT rendered ‘infructuous’ an order of the Appointments Committee of Cabinet (ACC), headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for returning the proposal of changing Mr. Chaturvedi’s cadre from Haryana to Uttarakhand on January 28, 2015 and which asked for fresh consents from Haryana and Uttarakhand State Governments.
A complaint was filed by Mr. Chaturvedi before the tribunal challenging the ACC’s response and reiterating that he had to face extreme hardship and the vindictive attitude at the hands of bureaucrats and political executives of the State on account of his adherence to rules and his desire to take action against irregularities and illegalities within his jurisdiction as a public servant.
In their reply, the Government submitted that they were prepared to reconsider Mr. Chaturvedi’s case and sought time for disposal of his application, adding that they were prepared to consider the points raised by him afresh.
“We are of the opinion that the impugned order dated January 28, 2015 is rendered infructuous ipso facto as the matter is to be reconsidered by respondents as submitted by counsel for the respondents (that is, the Union of India, Ministry of Environment and Forests and Department of Personnel & Training),” the Bench said adding that Mr. Chaturvedi’s predicament be ‘preferably’ addressed ‘within two months’.
A complaint was filed by the whistleblower before the tribunal challenging the ACC order, which had sought fresh
consent from Haryana and Uttarakhand Governments
