resigning from Government is equally difficult as coming to government service

Mr Arvind Kejriwal’s study leave case- A legal analysis   

Mr Arvind Kejriwal was with the Indian Revenue Service (IRS) when he was granted study leave for two years in 2000. As per the information, he went on study leave from 1st November, 2000, upto 31st October 2002. He joined back on 1st November, 2002. 

The three years got over on 31st October, 2005 and he resigned in February, 2006.  Now, as per information in the Press, he has been asked to return his leave salary of Rs. 3.54 lakhs along with an interest of about Rs. 4.16 lakhs. 

There is another matter related with him where a balance amount of Rs. 54,000 over Computer loan along with Rs. 1.04 lakh of interest over that is being shown against him. I wanted to undertake a purely legal study of the matter and found that as per Rule 63(1) of the Central Civil Services (Leave Rules) 1972, which is about resignation or retirement after study leave or non-completion of the course of study, if a Government servant resigns or retires from service or otherwise quits service without returning to duty after a period of study leave or within a period of three years after such return to duty or fails to complete the course of study and is thus unable to furnish the certificates as required under sub-rule (5) of Rule 53 he shall be required to refund the actual amount of leave salary, Study Allowance, cost of fees etc along with interest thereon at rates for the time being in force on Government loans from the date of demand, before his resignation is accepted or permission to retire is granted.  

What is to be noted here is that the word used is- “within a period of three years after such return to duty”. Thus, all it needs is that a government servant shall come back to service and join his duty which Mr Kejriwal did on 1st November, 2002. Here, there is no requirement that the member of service shall remain in active service or any other such condition. Hence, a prima-facie reading of the Rule seems to mean that a government servant needs to return to service and after any situation, including 2 years extraordinary leave which was taken in Mr Kejriwal’s case, he is entitled to leave the service after a period of 3 years from return to duty. Another fact that seems to give added weigtage to this interpretation is that Rule 3(d) under definitions also says that  

“Completed years of service” means continuous service of specified duration under the Central Government and includes the period spent on duty as well as on leave including extraordinary leave. Thus, this also clearly makes extraordinary leave a part of period spent on duty. These two Rules taken together seem to legally point out that Mr Kejriwal had completed three years in service before he finally resigned and hence was entitled to his study leave salary to be kept with him. About his computer loan, it is said that he stated that he wanted this amount to be deducted from his GPF account. This seems pretty logical and also legally would not have left any interest burden on him, if his resignation had got accepted in a stipulated time. 

In fact, one very interesting fact that emerges in Mr Arvind Kejriwal's case is the delay that often occurs in acceptance of resignation from service. I have two friends from UP IPS, Mr Dawa Sherpa who is now a leader in Gorkhaland and Mr Kiran Jadhav, who is now in corporate world, who have resigned some 4 years ago but their cases are still pending and theoretically they are still in service. Another very case is that of Mr Sanjay Pandey, IPS officer from Maharashtra and an IIT Kanpur graduate whose resignation has still not been accepted after so many years and who is fighting cases only to get his resignation accepted.

Thus, it seems resigning from Government is equally difficult as coming to government service