1000 TIT BITS ON DISCIPLINE -204
IMPORTANT CASE LAW
857. (i) In Krishna Chandra Tandon v. Union of India, AIR 1974 SC 1589, the refusal of permission to engage a legal practitioner was upheld by the Supreme Court on the ground that appellant himself was an Income Tax Officer and all that he was required was to defend the correctness of an order made by himself.
858. (ii) In Management of National Seeds Corporation Ltd, v. K.V. Rama Reddy, 2006 Lab. IC 4227 decided by Supreme Court on 29.9.2006, the disciplinary authority had refused the permission to engage a legal practitioner as defence assistance. However, the High Court allowed it. The matter came up before the Supreme Court. He was seeking permission on the grounds, (a) amount alleged to have been misappropriated is Rs.63.67 lakhs (b) number of documents and number of witnesses are relied on by the respondent, and (c) the prayer for availing services of the retired employee has been rejected and the respondent is unable to get any assistance to get any other able co-worker. The Supreme Court set-aside the order of the High Court and held that it was not necessary to grant permission to him because :
"None of these factors are really relevant for the purpose of deciding as to whether he should be granted permission to engage the legal practitioner. As noted earlier, he had to explain the factual position with reference to the documents sought to be utilized against him. A legal practitioner would not be in a position to assist the respondent in this regard. It has not been shown as to how a legal practitioner would be in a better position to assist the respondent so far as the documents in question are concerned. As a matter of fact, he would be in a better position to explain and throw light on the question of acceptability or otherwise and the relevance of the documents in question. The High Court has not considered these aspects and has been swayed by the fact that the respondent was physically handicapped person and the amount involved is very huge. As option to be assisted by another employee is given the respondent, he was in no way prejudiced by the refusal to permit engagement of a legal practitioner. The High Court's order is, therefore, unsustainable and is set aside." (para 18)
It was held that permission should have been granted in the following cases:
859. (iii) Where two very senior officers of the department were the prime witnesses and hence nobody from the department was volunteering as defence assistant; the accused himself was perturbed, in a bad state of health and in an unbalanced state of mind; legal and factual complexities were involved; his nominee for defence assistance from other department was not released by that department; the case was being presented by experienced Police Inspector of the CBI who had developed the argumental technique by virtue of constant handling of the cases; and representation of the accused against bias of the inquiry officer had been rejected [A.J. Vaswani v. Union of India, SLR 1982(3) Cal. 172].
860. (iv) Where permission was refused to the charged officer to engage the same person as legal practitioner who was rendering defence assistance to him but had resigned from service in the midst of the inquiry and had become an advocate [Commissioner of Income Tax v. Rabindra Nath Chatterjee, (1979)3 SCC 575].
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