VIGILANCE MANUAL VOLUME III - AP Online

570 DECISION - 267
conditions of service and once an employee is found fit for promotion,
his promotion cannot arbitrarily be withheld and a junior promoted
instead in the face of Arts. 14 and 16 of Constitution. On the other
hand, the purity of public service requires that a person under a cloud
i.e. person against whom disciplinary or criminal proceedings had
been initiated and are pending, should get himself absolved of the
charges before he is actually promoted. It will be against public
interest if any employee who is being proceeded against say on a
charge of corruption were to be promoted while facing the corruption
charges. It is only to keep a proper balance between these two
concepts, instructions have been issued from time to time to adopt
the sealed cover procedure which is intended to protect the interest
of the employee in the matter of promotion and also to advance the
public interest and to sustain purity of public service.
The Tribunal held that the sealed cover procedure is to be
followed only when proceedings are initiated i.e. when a charge-sheet
is filed in a criminal court or charge memo under the C.C.A. Rules is
served on the official.
The Tribunal held that not giving arrears of salary i.e. the
salary for the period during which promotion was withheld which he
would have drawn if the promotion had not been withheld, is a clear
violation of Arts. 14 and 16 when compared with other employees
against whom disciplinary proceedings had not been initiated. They
struck down the portion of para 2 of the instructions dated 30-1-82
which says, “but no arrears are allowed in respect of the period prior
to the date of actual promotion”, and directed that on exoneration,
the salary, which the person concerned would have received on
promotion if he had not been subjected to disciplinary proceedings,
should be paid along with the other benefits.
The Tribunal held, that similarly, the provision that in the event
of the official being given a penalty at the conclusion of the disciplinary
proceedings the results of the sealed cover should not be given affect
to or acted upon is open to attack on the ground that the official