Allahabad High Court: In a recent judgment passed by the Division Bench comprising of Dr. Devendra Kumar Arora and Rajnish Kumar JJ., in regard of the orders given by the State Government with respect to applications of voluntary retirement were disposed of.
The aggrieved petitioners were members of the Provincial Medical Services (PMS), and had applied for voluntary retirement, but their petitions were rejected on the basis of scarcity of doctors in the State. As per the criteria enumerated under Fundamental Rules 56(c) of the Financial Handbook, voluntary retirement can be stopped only if the individual concerned is at a premature age, or is subject to some disciplinary proceeding. In the accumulated writ petitions of this case, all the conditions were fulfilled, and all the four petitioners were rejected on the grounds of poor medical conditions in the State.
Reliance was placed on the landmark judgments in Dinesh Chandra Sangma v. State of Assam, (1977) 4 SCC 441, Union of India v. Sayed Muzaffer Mir, 1995 Supp (1) SCC 76 : AIR 1995 SC 176 and Dr Anil Dewan v. State of Punjab, CWP No.9455 of 2008, which unanimously concluded that the State could not interpret the rule on its own convenience and that voluntary retirement was a right which could not be infringed. Hence, the previous order was quashed and retirement was granted to the petitioners. [Dr. Achal Singh v. State of U.P., Service Bench No. 14939 of 2017, decided on 29-11-2017)
