SC waives cost imposed on IFoS officer

The Supreme Court has waived the cost of Rs 50,000 on Indian Forest Service officer Sanjiv Chaturvedi imposed by the Punjab and Haryana High Court for non-filing of the reply in a case.
The High Court order had come on a plea of Haryana government seeking quashing of the Presidents order dropping the charge sheet against Chaturvedi.
A bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra directed the High Court to look into the contention of Chaturvedi who said that a similar petition was pending before the apex court and asked it to decide the issue after hearing both the parties.

"The cost imposed by the High Court is made easy. It is the stand of the petitioner that a similar issue is pending before this Court... The High Court shall take note of the similarity of the issue pending before this Court, after hearing counsel for the parties.
"We may hasten to add that we have not expressed any opinion with regard to the similarity of the issue and it shall be open to the parties to raise the same before the High Court from their perspective," it said.
Chaturvedi had moved the apex court against the High Court verdict claiming that a similar petition was pending in the top court and the HC had erred in entertaining the plea of Haryana government.

Departmental proceedings were initiated against Chaturvedi which led to filing of charge sheet during 2007-2012 for allegedly uncovering a multi-crore scam in the forestry programme.

Later, the IFoS official had made a representation to the President under Rule 25 of the All India Service Rules after which a two-member enquiry committee was constituted by Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) in 2010 which submitted its report after taking version of Govt. of Haryana.
After examining the findings of the inquiry and communications with the Haryana government, the MoEF had quashed the charge sheet.
The Haryana government had, however, contended that the Ministry of Environment and Forests had illegally constituted a committee that had given clean chit to Chaturvedi and indicted state government officials.