Cuttack: Orissa High Court has held that allowing a public servant without integrity to continue in service is "dangerous or menace to the society".
The court expressed the opinion while refusing to interfere against retiring of a government servant compulsorily. The compulsory retirement order was given in the case of a sheristadar at the court of civil judge (junior division), Kandhamal.
A sheristadar is the chief officer in a court entrusted with the task of receiving and checking court pleas. The word has been derived from the Persian word sarishta-dar meaning "record keeper".
Sanatan Sahu was appointed as LDC/junior clerk in the judgeship of Kandhamal-Boudh, Phulbani on November 25, 1981 and promoted to the post of senior clerk on October 10, 1997. On December 2, 2003, he was promoted to the post of sheristadar. Sahu had sought intervention of the high court after his compulsory retirement order was issued on February 26, 2011, when he was 54.
The court felt that judiciary, being the third column of the Constitution and the bedrock of development of the country, "should command tremendous faith of people at large at any cost".
"Integrity and competency are both sides of a coin that every judicial employee has to possess in order to continuance in service. At no stretch of imagination, integrity or competency of a judicial employee can be compromised at any event," the division bench of Justice B.K. Nayak and Justice D.P. Choudhury ruled.
While the service of a government servant is reviewed "due regard must have to be given to all aspects, particularly with respect to integrity, without which allowing a public servant to continue in service is dangerous or menace to the society as well as hurdle for reposing confidence on the organisation", the bench ruled in its December 6 order.
While dismissing Sahu's plea, the court felt that his service records did not give a rosy picture of his service career. "It appears that from 2003 onwards, the petitioner has become insincere and lacked zeal to take up more responsibility and the same continued till 2010," the bench observed.
The division bench further ruled that the entire service record a person had to be taken into consideration when his continuance in service or not was considered in the public interest.
