The Delhi High Court has said that educational institutions should establish a robust system for record preservation, and specifically asked the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan (KVS) to adopt modern practices like digitisation to achieve this objective.
A division bench of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Sanjeev Narula set aside the imposition of a Rs 2 lakh fine on the KVS by a single-judge bench.
The case in question involved the dismissal of a teacher from a Kendriya Vidyalaya.
The single-judge bench had criticised the organisation for lacking proper governance and not maintaining important employee-related documents. As a consequence of the negligence in preserving and producing the annual confidential report, the teacher was awarded Rs 2 lakh as costs.
The court pointed out the importance of instilling efficiency and accountability in institutions like KVS.
While it agreed with the single-judge bench’s comments on the need for robust record-keeping systems in educational institutions, it deemed the imposed cost to be disproportionate to the circumstances in this particular case.
“Instead, it would be more equitable to address the need for better record-keeping by directing KVS to adopt better practices such as digitization etc., to ensure the proper preservation of records so that such incidents do not occur in future,” the bench said.
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