The Madhya Pradesh High Court recently made a ruling stating that the government cannot take action against an employee under the disciplinary rules of service for their activities in a private WhatsApp group. This ruling was made in the case of ID Makrani vs The State Of Madhya Pradesh.
“If any member forwards a message in the Whatsapp group which does not mean that it is his personal opinion. Any message in the form of text, photo or video sent in Whatsapp group is confined to the members of the said group. It cannot be said that message had been made public,” the Court observed.
Justice Vivek Rusia, who presided over the case, reasoned that forwarding a WhatsApp message in a private WhatsApp group does not amount to making it public. The court observed that such groups are private in nature and are often formed by like-minded people. Therefore, the activities of a government employee in a private WhatsApp group cannot be linked with serious disciplinary rules.
The court made these observations while dealing with a petition filed by a government official who was suspended for forwarding an “objectionable political message” in a WhatsApp group with other employees. The court concluded that since the WhatsApp group was private and had nothing to do with the officer’s work for the government, the government could not take disciplinary action against the employee.
The court further explained that forwarding a message in a WhatsApp group does not necessarily mean that the person is expressing their personal opinion. It emphasized that any message sent in a WhatsApp group, whether it is in the form of text, photo, or video, is confined to the members of that group and cannot be considered as being made public.
In this particular case, the petitioner, Makrani, had forwarded the WhatsApp message to the group, and he claimed that it had been inadvertently forwarded by his six-year-old daughter. However, the court found that the petitioner had not updated his service book in respect of the birth of his daughter, indicating that his claim was not false. The court also did not accept the contention that forwarding a message on WhatsApp can be questioned under the service rules.
“The Government has not issued any circular or made statutory provision for Government employee / office to create Whatsapp group, therefore, any activity of Government employee in the group cannot be linked with serious disciplinary rules.”
Based on these findings, the court allowed the petition and quashed the order of suspension as well as the charge sheet issued to the petitioner.
No comments:
Post a Comment