Penalised for jumping queue, airman gets Rs 1 lakh in damages

NEW DELHI: Motorcyclists weaving through waiting traffic to go right up to the railway crossing, closed to allow passage of a train, is common in India. But an airman indulging in such ‘indiscipline’, leading to his detention for a day, made SC order Union government to pay Rs 1 lakh compensation to him.

AFT had allowed airman S P Pandey’s plea and quashed the order of admonition passed against him on Jan 18, 2011. But he moved SC seeking compensation for the excessive action by IAF and loss of dignity.

A bench of Justices P S Narasimha and Sandeep Mehta said, “Small excesses like overtaking the vehicle of one’s senior at a railway crossing may be an incident of indiscipline in defence services, but the balance and proportion that needs to be maintained between such an infraction, and its punishment will always be at the core of good governance. If the balance is not maintained, the distinction between bad governance, impropriety, unfairness and inhuman treatment is not much. The tribunal is right in holding that a small incident has unnecessarily grown beyond proportion.”