RailEnquiry

CHENNAI: Rajalakshmi Subramanian, 53, an accounts assistant with Southern Railway, has spent two decades waiting to retrieve her career. Charged with creating forged documents and suspended in 1989, she was vindicated when her suspension was revoked in 1999 and a CBI court ordered her discharge from the case in 2007.Now, a bench of B Venkateswara Rao, judicial member, and R Satapathy, administrative member, of the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) has ordered that her period of suspension be regularized and she be promoted on a par with her juniors with all attendant benefits within three months.Rajalakshmi joined as a clerk at Trichy in 1980 and subsequently transferred to Chennai. She was on the selection panel after passing an exam for a promotion in 1987. After being suspended in 1989 along with V Sivan, a colleague, she resumed her post as accounts assistant after her suspension was revoked in 1999. However, a charge memo for the offences was served only in 2009, two years after she was discharged from the case, her advocate S Saravana Prakash said.The department said this was because criminal prosecution was initiated before a departmental inquiry began. Since the records became court property, they were returned to the CBI only after the discharge petition filed by Rajalakshmi was allowed by the CBI court in 2007. While passing orders on a petition filed by Sivan earlier, the CAT said the department could have also obtained certified copies of the documents.

Passing orders in Rajalakshmi's case, the bench said, "We take serious note of the fact that the applicant, now 53, had been forced to run from pillar to post since 1989" and that there was "no justification or rationale" on part of the authorities to deny her a promotion for the last 22 years.