Raj HC direct deceased govt employee's arrears be paid from IAS officer's pesion

In an unusual order, Rajasthan High Court has asked two IAS officers to pay the benefits of deemed reinstatement and arrears of salary to the legal heirs of the employee from their pensions, whom they dismissed without following the due process of law.

A single-judge bench of Justice SP Sharma directed the state government to recover damages for the illegal termination of a Rajasthan State Handloom Development Corporation (RHDC) employee from the pension of retired IAS officer Umrao Salodia and Damodar Sharma. The bench directed that the recoveries be made within four months. The order came 16 years after the injustice meted out to the employee and 11 years after his death in 2008.

The order came on a petition filed by Sashi Mohan Mathur who had worked in the post of probationary junior assistant at the Rajasthan State Handloom Development Corporation from October 11, 1991, and remained on probation till 1996. However, owing to “false” charges of embezzlement of Rs 52,588, he was retrenched and dismissed from service by the then charge of the RHDC, IAS Umrao Salodia and managing director of the corporation Damodar Sharma on October 17, 1997.

Mathur approached high court in 2002 but he passed away in 2008. Later his wife continued to fight the legal battle. The court found appellant authority guilty for not following the law and a bench of Justice Sanjeev Prakash Sharma directed that Mathur be treated as being employed and his arrears recovered from the pension and other postretirement benefits of Salodia and Sharma.

It is to be recalled that former IAS Umrao Salodia was in the news for converting to Islam after he was not appointed the chief secretary to Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje in 2016.