New Delhi, July 29: The Supreme Court today told the government to re-instate a young IFS officer who was discharged from the service eight years ago on allegations of trying to bribe a government servant, lack of devotion to duty and of harassing a woman’s family.
The two-judge bench of Justice Altamas Kabir and Justice A.K. Patnaik directed the government to take back Mahaveer C. Singhvi within a month.
The Supreme Court today also slapped the costs of Rs 25,000 on the government for appealing against an August 29, 2008, Delhi High Court order which had directed it to take him back. The high court had rapped the government for giving the officer such short shrift and removing him at the threshold of his career without even hearing his account.
“The country, particularly its courts, has come a long way in interdicting such one-sided arbitrary assessments of subordinates that have the potential of utterly destroying their careers, nay even their very lives, without a proper opportunity to the affected officers,” the high court had said.
It had set aside the September 4, 2003, central administrative tribunal order disallowing Singhvi any relief and quashed his discharge.
The high court had also directed the government to reinstate him in the IFS cadre of 1999 along with seniority and other benefits within a month.
Singhvi, who is now in his mid-thirties, joined the IFS on September 20, 1999. He served for around three years till he was discharged from service on June 13, 2002. He then moved the Central Administrative Tribunal but to no avail.
Singhvi had enrolled in 1998 at the Vajiram and Rao Institute for coaching for the civil service exams in Delhi. There he became friendly with 25-year-old Arleen Chadha.
Singhvi obtained a high rank in the civil service examination in 1998 and in September 1999 was allocated the IFS.
Of the nine officers who got the IFS that year, he secured the fifth rank.
He alleged that after he made it to the IFS, Arleen’s mother wrote to his father on June 4, 2000, proposing the marriage of her daughter, a municipal primary school teacher, to Singhvi. But his parents turned down the match, which Singhvi said, angered the Chadhas.
Till 2001, things went smoothly for Singhvi in his career. But a complication arose in the allocation of a foreign language that he was required to learn as an IFS officer. He alleged he had been allocated the wrong language.
But his effort to have it rectified sparked animosity with an additional secretary, P.L. Goyal, and several other senior officers, he claimed. He said a noting was made in his file that he was indisciplined.
Thereafter, Singhvi alleged, systematic steps were taken to undermine him, including an accusation that he brought political pressure on his seniors to sort out the foreign language allocation problem.
Around this time, the Chadhas started blackmailing him, Singhvi alleged. On February 4, 2002, he filed a complaint against Arleen’s family. The Chadhas apparently told him to withdraw the complaint. When he did not, they filed a counter-complaint with the ministry of external affairs.
Singhvi claimed that by an unhappy coincidence the two inimical strains combined and an unholy alliance was forged to destroy his promising career.
After a unilateral inquiry, he was discharged from service. No notice or opportunity was given to him to respond to the allegations, he said.
