‘Authority carries accountability’: Supreme Court restores bank manager’s dismissal

Supreme Court reinstates a bank manager's dismissal, emphasizing that higher authority entails greater accountability and responsibility.

The Supreme Court has reinstated the dismissal of a bank's senior manager, underscoring that authority comes with accountability, and his position carried with it an increased degree of responsibility and integrity.

The top court noted allegations that the senior manager had connived with an officer and a gunman to misappropriate the money of customers for personal gain and steal bank records.

The apex court set aside the Delhi High Court order, which had modified the punishment of dismissal from service to compulsory retirement.

The High Court had noted that for similar charges, different punishments were imposed on the co-delinquents — the officer and the gunman — with the senior manager having been given the most severe punishment without any difference in their roles.

However, the apex court disagreed with this reasoning.

"Quite apart, equating a branch manager of a bank with its gunman seems to us to be in outrageous defiance of logic and reason," a Bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Satish Chandra Sharma said in its April 2 judgement.