A day after the Centre withdrew its appeal that challenged a High Court order relating to the monthly deduction from E Sreedharan’s salary as the CMD of the Konkan Railway Corporation, the government counsel has said the plea was taken back at his initiative.

On Tuesday, Chief Justice A P Shah and Justice Manmohan had reprimanded the government counsel for “making a fuss over a paltry sum while Sreedharan had provided exemplary service to the nation.”

“It was clear to us that the judges did not approve of the appeal. They were most likely to have rejected it. This would have given a bad name to the government,” said advocate V S R Krishna, the government counsel in the case. “We also wanted to protect the interest of all parties involved, so, keeping all considerations in mind, we decided to withdraw the appeal,” Krishna said.

Sreedharan had filed a writ petition in the Delhi High Court in 2002, when talks with the Konkan Railway Corporation failed. According to his lawyer Tarun Johri, after retiring from the Indian Railways in 1990, Sreedharan joined Konkan Railway on a pay scale of Rs 9,000 to 10,000 for a period of five years. Konkan Railway, however, began deducting Rs 4,000 from his salary contending that it was a re-employment under the Union Government and he could not draw pension and salary from two government departments at the same time. The Centre had, at the time, argued that Sreedharan’s appointment was made after consultations with the Ministry of Railways and the Department of Public Enterprises, under whose rules, “there was no provision of fresh employment.”

... contd.