HC directs Centre to ensure strict implementation of its orders abolishing orderly system in the uniformed forces

The general direction was issued while allowing a writ petition filed by Central Reserve Police Force constable M. Muthu in 2016 challenging his dismissal from service.
| Photo Credit: File Photo

The Madras High Court on Friday directed the Union Ministry of Home Affairs to ensure strict implementation of an order passed by the latter on May 23, 2014 abolishing the practice of engaging personnel of low rank in the central armed police forces, National Security Guards and Assam Rifles for the personal work of higher officials.

Justice S.M. Subramaniam wrote: “The first respondent (Home Ministry) shall ensure that actions are initiated against the higher officials who all are practising the colonial system of orderly in their battalion by using the constables/combatant/other employees for their personal works either at their residence or elsewhere.”

The general direction was issued while allowing a writ petition filed by Central Reserve Police Force constable M. Muthu in 2016 challenging his dismissal from service. The petitioner had alleged that he was victimised because of his reluctance to serve as an orderly and insistence that he should be deployed only on combatant duty.

After going through the records, the judge was convinced that there was no acceptable evidence to find the petitioner guilty of having consumed liquor and threatened to shoot his higher officials The inconsistency in considering the documents and evidences makes the findings of the inquiry officer perverse, he observed.

Further, finding that another constable, facing a similar charge, had been punished only with reduction of pay by one stage for a period of one year, the judge said, the petitioner alone ought not to have been dismissed from service. He directed CRPF to reinstate the petitioner in service and impose punishment of reduction of pay.

Disapproving of the practice of orderly system continuing in the central uniformed services too, the judge ordered that disciplinary action must be taken against the higher officials who force constables to do personal work and that the salary of the latter should be recovered from the salary of the former.