VIGILANCE MANUAL VOLUME III - AP Online

496 DECISION - 224
was made in the relevant regulations that a legal practitioner should
be allowed for the defence of the charged officer when the Presenting
Officer is a legal practitioner or when the disciplinary authority having
regard to the circumstances of the cases gives special permission.
The Supreme Court observed that immediately after the
introduction of the above provision, the disciplinary authority should
have suo motu reopened the charged officer’s request for assistance
of a legal practitioner and should have granted the permission in
view of the fact that the prosecution was represented by legally trained
persons and held that the failure of the disciplinary authority to do so
vitiated the inquiry proceedings.
The Supreme Court observed that the time-honoured and
traditional approach was that a domestic inquiry was purely a
managerial function and it was best left to the management without
the intervention of the legal profession and that intervention of legal
profession in the domestic inquiry would vitiate the informal
atmosphere of a domestic tribunal. In the past, such informal
atmosphere perhaps prevailed in domestic inquiries and the strict
rules of evidence and pitfalls of procedural law did not hamstrung
the inquiry but the situation had moved far away from such a stage.
The present employer has on his pay rolls Labour Officers, Legal
Advisers and lawyers in the garb of employees and they are frequently
appointed Presenting/prosecuting Officers while the charged officers
are left to fend for themselves. According to the Supreme Court,
such weighted scales and tilted balance in favour of the employer
can only be partly restored if the delinquent officer is given the same
legal assistance as the employer enjoys. If the necessary legal
assistance was not made available to the charged officer, it would
amount to not affording reasonable opportunity to the charged officer
to defend himself, and the inquiry proceedings would be contrary to
the principles of natural justice.
The Supreme Court also referred to the possible plea that