Earned Leave

Thank You Sir for your kind information.

Dear A. Ray
since you have direct communication with a legendary person in this field, i would like to ask you one question for which i could not find any satisfactory answer in my little service life. The question is that how leave can be sanctioned before resuming the duty? What course of action will be taken if the concerned employee dies in the middle of the sanctioned leave?
May be this question is silly and i hope you don’t mind answering.
Regards,
digitaldoc

Dear friend,
I ‘had’ a communication with the legendary person.
Leaves are supposed to be granted before the leave begins on the basis of the leave petition received. Leave Account is debited with the amount of leave prayed for. On resume of duty by the employee, he submits his joining report and thereafter his Joining is approved. If the leave is to be extended, the employee concerned have to apply by for the same and on his joining, the leave account is to be adjusted accordingly.
If an employee dies while he in on approved leave, it will be treated as ‘dying in harness’ i.e. he dies on duty.
Questions are never silly, friend. We all are here to discuss. Don’t hesitate to question.
Regards.

Actually my question was that what course of action will be taken for the residual part of the sanctioned leave (which the concerned employee could not enjoy because of death)? will that be cancelled? if yes then on which basis? (since the leave was sanctioned on the basis of the application of the employee and we cannot expect a dead man to apply for cancellation of leave)

The answer is hidden in your question. As you can not expect a deceased employee for cancellation of leave, the remaining part of the leave will certainly not be deducted from the deceased employees leave account and stating the fact, the leave account will be updated accordingly towards payment of Leave salary under rule 168B.

Dear Mr. A. Ray,
Is there any scope of application of mind while using any service rule to an employee! For example, since there is no clear-cut stipulation regarding the time of submission of an EL application what strategy an employer under the State Govt. (WB) may take before sanctioning the leave! Is there any provision in WBSR for ex-post facto approval of any recognised leave including EL!
With regards!

Dear Dr. Majumdar,
For the sake of a smooth day-to-day administration, the local administration (the Head of Office) may issue a standing order specifying a time to submit an application before the date of commencement of leave (say 5 days or like clear three working days excluding both the days of submission of application and commencement of leave). Actually what happens, the leave applications are not properly dealt with in many of the Offices and in many of the cases, leave application is dealt finally on receipt of joining report. Now, if one employee submits his leave application and it is not dealt before the commencement of leave due to pressure of work, convention, or reason whatsoever, it is a case of ‘unauthorized’ leave. But the employee can not be held responsible for it as he has submitted the application in due time.
Now, in some offices, there is indeed a persistent pressure of works of even more importance than leave of an individual. A case regarding public interest will definitely get privilege over leave of an individual. You can not blame one for that. To avoid this, either the service rules in this regard required to be modified on that score, or a timeline is to be set by the Head of Office as is convenient for that Office. Providing an application a reasonable time before the commencement of leave can be presumed in the way that if the case was dealt with, which could not be done due to matters of greater importance, it would have been granted by the leave sanctioning authority and therefore it may be considered ‘authorized’. Formal approval of the leave is made after joining in many of the cases.
Actually, this is always the best, if possible, to get the leave approved before the commencement of leave. The leave with a station leave permission, I feel, must be placed for approval as, if anything bad happens to the employee concerned while outstation, it will be a vital question whether he was on approved leave and permitted to leave the station.
Leave can be approved post-facto. W.B.S.R. permits it. Look what rule 162 says –
161. The authority which granted the leave may sanction retrospectively an extent of leave up to a maximum period of 14 days to a Government employee who overstays his leave, provided that he is satisfied either—
(a) that the overstay was due to circumstances beyond the Government employee’s control, and in the case of leave outside India, that an application to the Head of the Indian Mission accredited to the country for an extension was impossible before
embarkations; or
(b) that the overstay was administratively convenient. He may also sanction retrospectively an extension up to a similar limit (inclusive of any extension which may have been granted by the Head of the Indian Mission), to a Government employee returning from leave on medical certificate, if in his opinion the circumstances seem to require it.
Regards.