Employee Facing Disciplinary Proceeding Must Fully Cooperate and Participate in the Proceeding

The petitioner was a government employee, who was responsible for loss of revenue to the government during her employment as a reason of which the government reduced her pension by half on account of recovery of the financial loss. The petitioner challenged this order of the government before the High Court of Telangana vide W.P.(TR) No. 6221 of 2017. The disciplinary proceeding was challenged by the petitioner stating that documents were not shared with her during the disciplinary proceeding, to which the court observed that the petitioner was given ample opportunity to review the documents and actively take part in the proceedings. The required documents were sent to her but they were returned undelivered due to her unavailability. The petitioner was purposely trying to prolong the proceedings. Considering the material on record, the court held that if the employee undergoing disciplinary proceedings fails to cooperate and actively take part in the proceeding, in that case, the employee cannot later claim that he/she was not presented with evidence underpinning the charges.