Madras HC quashes transfer order of Education Dept officials

Chennai, Sep 10: Coming to the rescue of two Education Department officials in Tiruvarur district, the Madras High Court has set aside the transfer orders issued to them by the District Elementary Education Office (DEEO) following a "bogus" letter sent to it purportedly by the DVAC.

It also directed the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC) to conduct an inquiry to find out who had sent the "forged" letter. Justice B Rajendran recently gave the direction on a petition filed by R Ganesan, Superintendent of DEEO, Tiruvarur district and another official, U Rajan, seeking quashing of their transfer orders, issued by the Joint Director of the School Education Department on May 27.

Passing the orders, the judge said, "The impugned orders of transfer have been passed only on the basis of an alleged letter dated May 23, 2016 received by the department, without even conducting any basic inquiry to ascertain the genuineness of such a letter which turned out to be a bogus one."

"The orders of transfer are set aside. I am of the view that the impugned orders of transfer are not legally sustainable and the petitioners are entitled to get the period during which they were on leave, regularised by treating it as duty period," he observed.

The matter relates to the transfer orders issued by the School Education Department to the petitioners, on the basis of a letter purportedly sent by the DVAC regarding allegations of bribery. The petitioners' counsel, T Aananthi, submitted that the letter received by the department on May 23 was not served on the petitioners and when they sought a copy of the same, they were only permitted to peruse it.

The letter had alleged that the petitioners had demanded money for including the names of certain individuals in the seniority list for promotion. However, Additional Government pleader Gunasekharan submitted that the letter received from the DVAC was "a bogus one".

Stating that such an action on part of the officials has to be deprecated, the judge said, "Before effecting transfers, the respondents ought to have conducted some inquiry to ascertain the genuineness of such a letter or at least, they should have served a copy of the same on the petitioners."

The judge then directed the DVAC to investigate and find out who was instrumental behind sending the bogus letter and submit a report.

PTI