HC directs Rane, chief secretary to file affidavits

However, counsel for the chief minister argued that when the newspaper cuttings about the letters were presented to him Rane had three options before him. First to ask the CS to take action against him, but since the CS was targetted in these letters, it would have looked improper. The second option was to suspend him, which since Bhatia was an upright officer was not considered. The Chief Minister then took the only other decision left to him, to transfer him and ask the departmental enquiry to be instituted.

Counsel for one of the petitioners, Sunanda Das and others, Iqbal Chhagla urged the court to “pass adverse remarks against the CS,” or “direct him to file an affidavit” for his “eloquent absence” in the case since no affidavit was filed by him. Th e Government has filed an affidavit through the principal secretary, general administration, Navin Kumar on the issue. “Even in this affidavit, only one point was stressed, which is that the transfer was an administrative decision”, despaired Chhagla.

Chhagla read out the note that chief minister Rane had written to the Chief Secretary asking that Bhatia be transferred in the light of the confidential letters written by him to the CS, being published in some local newspapers. Chhagla wondered if there could be any “cogent reasoning” in such an order. “How does a departmental enquiry in any way affect the working of the corporation?” he asked, “Was Bhatia working against the interests of the corporation?”.

He reiterated that the transfer of Bhatia was done against the government’s own circular which said that an officer should not be transferred within a year, unless in exceptional cases for which reasons have to be recorded. He also read out the rules from the All India Service Rules and remarked that “transfers were not listed even as a penalty”.

However, the Chief Justice Y K Sabharwal asked Chhagla to satisfy the court that there was any public interest in the matter in which the transfer was conducted. “Can there be any public interest in a transfer even if it violated the guidelines or was punitive? That should be between the officer and the state government,” the Chief Justice observed.

To this, Chhagla said that it had to do with the public perception of a man who was honest and hardworking which suffers a loss of morale if “persons of integrity are transferred on `specious’ grounds. I will satisfy the court that they are `specious’ grounds…It is the greatest violence to the public and public administration”.

He declaimed that if the court were to shut down its doors on public interests of such kind “which examine the government action. How else was the public to learn about such administrative orders where even reasons are unexplained. For purposes of finding if the letters were leaked, is it necessary to remove him from office?” he asked.

He also drew the attention of the court to the hike in salary given to Bhatia in his recent posting as the commissioner, Archives. “So the public has to pay for more for the state’s decision to transfer him? The transfer is sought to be camouflaged by raising the salary,” he argued.

While urging that the bench order the CS to file an affidavit, Chhagla said that otherwise he might have to ask the court to draw inferences. Chief Justice Sabharwal too observed that the court was not keen on rushing through the petition of a matter of such importance from the public view point of it and asked that the CM and the CS file affidavits in this regard. The matter has now been posted to April 12.