If not directly involved, govt can't recover loss from employee

The government cannot recover the amount from its employee for the monetary loss caused to it by his negligence if he is not directly responsible for it, the Centre Administrative Tribunal (CAT) has said.

The tribunal slammed the Postal Department for recovering Rs 2 lakh from the salary of its postmaster for his alleged negligence which resulted in loss of Rs 32.35 lakh to it in which he was not directly involved.

"If there is no direct link between the misconduct on the part of the government servant on one hand and the pecuniary loss sought to be recovered from him, the result would be that this penalty recovery cannot be imposed on him," the tribunal said.

"There must be cause-and-effect relationship between the misconduct of the government servant and the pecuniary loss caused to the government," the Tribunal said while quashing the Centre's order.

The Tribunal passed the order on a plea of one Nagendra Pal Singh challenging the Department's order of halting his increment for one year and recovery of Rs 2 lakh from his salary after it came to the conclusion that there was negligence on his part.

The department, justifying the action taken against Singh, alleged that during 2003-04 when he was assistant postmaster of Head Post Office, Aligarh, he had supplied 300 blank passbooks to another post office, which was misused by its sub postmaster.