Continued Absenteeism - Domestic Enquiry

Dear All,
I work in a newspaper establishment and am in a role of framing polcies for the company. Recently am framing a policy on Abandonment of services and want my company to follow all proceedures as per law in case of handling absconding cases. Hence, I wanted to know that in case of absenteeism, company follows process of sending Show cause notices asking him/her to return to work on a specified date or respond to the notices. Is there a clause in ID Act which says that in case an employee has been there in a continous service of 240 days, a company cannot terminate him/her only on the basis of Show cause notices unless they hold a domestic enquiry. If yes, what is the propoer proceedure of the same?

Dear Anjudhup

How can you tell that a person is abandoning the organisation? He may be met with some accident; or due to unavoidable circumstances he might have proceeded on leave to his native where there is no connectivity to inform about his absence; or if he went on leave after approval then he might have overstayed his leave due to natural calamity or anything happened beyond the employee's control, then without confirming from the individual employee you cannot come to one conclusion as the employee is abondoned.

In that case you must serve two notices to his home address (duly registered with acknowledgement Due Post) and in those notice you must give some reasonable time to resume his duties. If he does not return to duty then further you must serve one more notice stating that "it is understood that you are not interested to join back on duty. Hence you are declared as absconder and you can come and collect your final benefits from our accounts department". If the employee does not report for duty, you cannot conduct the Domestic enquiry or any statutory disciplinary action against him untill unless he is liable to make any payment to the company or any assets held on his possession.

Nowadays even the supreme court judgements are also favouring the employers in the long absent as well as discipline cases and not the employees.