NEW DELHI: Taking exception to Centre declaring an “outstanding” Indian Trade Service officer “dead wood” and punishing him with compulsory retirement, Supreme Court Wednesday directed all pecuniary benefits and notional promotions to him be restored and ordered govt to pay him Rs 15 lakh as compensation. S S Das was forced to retire in 2018, five years before his superannuation.A bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Sheel Nagu, which had directed Centre to place dossiers and the annual confidential record of the officer before it, found he was consistently graded as outstanding/very good from 1994 and promoted just months before the punishment. It directed govt to grant Das the honourable farewell he would have been entitled to had he not been forced to retire.“The manner of decision-making in course whereof ‘OUTSTANDING’ gradings are completely ignored, grant of promotion is looked upon as if it were a ministerial exercise, followed by a vague and omnibus finding that it is not desirable in public interest to retain the appellant in service, discloses that the officers entrusted to take a decision were determined to ensure the appellant’s ouster at any cost and invented reasons to sustain a pre-decided conclusion,” the bench said, calling the exercise “sheer abuse of high offices”.“Having promoted the appellant, barely a couple of months later, the superior officers in the department could not have branded him… ‘dead wood’ to justify weeding him out. The two actions are mutually destructive and cannot co-exist,” it said.
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SC said the action demolished the reputation of an officer which was uncalled for. It directed that Das be called to the office by the director general of foreign trade for a farewell with full honours.“It must be remembered by all and sundry that reputation is not built overnight. It is built by years of dedicated and selfless service. It comes at a great cost, often at the cost of family life and personal comfort. Such a reputation earned by sweat and toil over decades can, however, be marred by a single stroke of a pen,” the bench said.SC said FR 56(j) – which gives Centre the right to prematurely retire a govt servant – should not be exercised lightly or in a casual manner. “It must be founded on material which is credible, cogent and worthy of being acted up-on, and not on mere suspicion and conjecture,” it added.