Child Care Leave - Income Tax Department in appeal against own employee
A Tax assistant in the Income Tax Department applied for ‘child care leave'. Instead of giving leave, her bosses asked for her explanation in a memo. She approached the Tribunal. The Central Administrative Tribunal observed,
If Child Care Leave under the Rules is denied to the applicant, till her son attains the age of 18 years, the very purpose and object of introducing this welfare scheme will stand defeated. The object behind the scheme cannot be nullified by an act of executive, which is not the intention of rule framing authority.
Fairness, in our opinion, is a fundamental principle of good administration. It is a rule to ensure that the vast power in the modern State is not abused but properly exercised. The State power is used for proper and not for improper purposes. The authority is not misguided by extraneous or irrelevant consideration. Fairness is also a principle to ensure that statutory authority arrives at a just decision either in promoting the interest or affecting the rights of persons. To use the time-hallowed phrase that "justice should not be only be done but be seen to be done" is the essence of fairness equally applicable to administrative authorities. Fairness is thus a prime test for proper and good administration.
The Tribunal directed the Department to act strictly in accordance with the DOPT OM dated 11.09.2008 as amended/clarified on 29.09.2008 and 18.11.2008 and to sanction the Child Care leave applied by the applicant on 28.8.2013 and issue a regular sanction proceedings from 10.09.2013.
The Union of India represented by the Commissioner of Income Tax was aggrieved by this order of the CAT and took the matter in appeal to the High Court.
The High Court observed,
The only direction issued by the Tribunal was to direct the petitioners to act strictly in accordance with DOPT OM dated 11.9.2008, as amended by subsequent letters and to sanction child care leave. We do not know how the Union of India can be aggrieved by such a direction to the petitioners to act strictly in accordance with the office memorandum dated 11.9.2008.
It is not the case of the petitioners that child care leave is something which is unheard of. It is not the case of the petitioners that the leave application was rejected. Therefore, the order passed by the Tribunal does not call for any interference. Hence, the writ petition is dismissed.
It is not known whether the Department is considering an appeal to the Supreme Court.