Jharkhand High court has recently delivered a significant judgment to the state directing access to the service book to all employees numbering nearly two lakh which is being denied till now.
The service book of a public servant’s working life, incorporating salary, promotions, confidential assessment reports and leave and pension entitlements is updated every year but was not provided to the employees while in service.
In accordance to Jharkhand service rule, an employee has to apply for a certified copy of the endorsement made in their service books and that too can be obtained after superannuation.
The landmark judgment delivered by a bench headed by Justice D N Patel while hearing a petition of one Raghunath Pandey, a warder of Central Jail, Hazaribagh, who was penalized by the state for retiring three months late for no fault of his.
Pandey was appointed on August, 31,1973 and his retirement was due on June 30, 2009. But he continued to work till September, 2009 due to negligence of the jail authorities.
On October 9 that year the jail authorities detected their mistake. Despite serving a letter of retirement date of the warder, the jail authorities asked him to refund the excess salary drawn after his retirement..The jail warder challenged the jail’s order of October 9, 2009 before the high court. Justice Patel while hearing the appeal of the warder said, “the state should supply a copy of the entry made in the service book to its employees so that they may know if there is any mistake on the part of the state in the entries made by their superiors. It happens in several cases that there may be erroneous entries in the service book but the government has not being showing the service book to its employees for several years together”.
While rejecting the jail’s order to recover “excess salary”, the court ruled it was the duty of the state government to point out to a low ranking employee that he had to retire on June 30, 2009. Hence the government had failed to perform its duty.
The court also directed the chief secretary to direct all the department heads to provide certified copies of the service book which has to be maintained under rules 288 and 299 of the Jharkhand Service Code, in April every year.
