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Letters Patent Appeal No. 8 of 1958, decided on 29th April 1966.

Government of India Act, 1935, Ss. 240 & 241‑Government servant‑Dismissal or removal‑Show‑cause notice mandatory Cannot be bartered away or contracted out of‑Temporary employee or probationer also entitled to show‑cause notice‑[Federation of Pakistan v. Riaz Ali Khan P L D 1958 Lah. 22 reversed.]

The provisions of show‑cause notice are mandatory and cannot be bartered away or contracted out. If for example there was a contract taken from an employee, which might contain a clause that even if the employee was dismissed or removed from service, he shall not be eligible for a show‑cause notice, then such a contract would be illegal and void. This conclusion is true for two reasons. One is the absence of a provision subjecting the aforesaid safeguards, to a contract to the contrary, and the other is that these provisions are not meant really so much for the benefit of an employee, as their real aim is to regulate the public policy of procuring and preserving efficient service. It is obvious that a service will not be efficient unless its incumbents are pro tected against arbitrary and capricious orders and unless there is safeguard of their tenure and status, etc., and a feeling of confidence against arbitrary actions of their employer. It is well settled that provisions of the kind of a public policy can never be contracted out or bartered away and there can never be an estoppel against invoking such provisions.

The provisions of section 240 of the Government of India Act, 1935, as regards a show‑cause notice are mandatory and their effect could not be overridden either by any contract or rules to the contrary. This should be true both of permanent or temporary employees, and it is on this basis that a show‑cause notice is necessary even for removal and dismissal of a tem porary employee as well.

Reading section 241(2) with section 240, it is clear that though power is given as not to frame rules with regard to persons employed temporarily on condition of termination of service on a fixed notice, it does not mean that show‑cause notice safeguard is not available to them. It is to be remembered that show‑cause notice safeguard is against dismissal or removal from service and reduction in rank. The corollary, therefore, firstly, is that the authority to employ temporarily on condition, etc., grants only one exception, namely, that for those persons, rules need not be framed. But it nowhere says that when they are to be di