CENTRAL BANK OF INDIA Vs. SISIR KUMAR SHAW

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The respondent was working as a clerk in the Calcutta office of the Central Bank of India and performing the duties of the Clearing House representative on behalf of the Bank. He claimed that in accordance with the terms of the bipartite settlement dated 19th October 1966 he was entitled to the special allowance fixed for special assistants and claimed sum of Rupees 5013.01 for the period from 1-7-1966 to 30th April 1969. The appellant Bank denied that the respondent was a special assistant or that his duties at the Clearing House involved duties listed in respect of the category of special assistants. The Central Government Labour Court, Calcutta allowed the respondent's application filed under Section 33C (2) of the Industrial Disputes Act. This appeal has been filed in pursuance of special leave granted by this Court.

(2.) In order to understand the point implied in this case it is not necessary to refer to the details of the Sastry Award of 1953 or the Desai Award which ceased to apply in the year 1966. The bipartite agreement referred to earlier was entered into between the parties thereafter. Paragraph 5.2 of that agreement deals with the special allowance payable to the clerical staff. Twenty categories are listed under this and category (xix) is 'Special Assistants.' In Paragraph 5.6 of that agreement the special allowance provided for under Paragraph 5.2 is said to be intended to compensate a workman for performance or discharge of certain additional duties and functions requiring greater skill or responsibilities, over and above the routine duties and functions of a workman in the same cadre. The additional duties and functions involving greater skill or responsibility which would entitle a workman to a special allowance, are more particularly enumerated, for each category of workmen, in Appendix B. In that Appendix the portion relevant for our purpose is the following:

(3.) Now the procedure in the clearing house appears to be this. Each Bank sends a representative to the clearing house which is maintained by the Reserve Bank of India with all the cheques paid into it by its customers and drawn on various other banks. They also send their books for this purpose and send vouchers along with the cheques. In the clearing house they receive the cheques drawn by various persons on their Bank but paid into their accounts in other banks. Therefore, Exhibit 5 gives an idea of the cheques delivered by the Central Bank of India on 6-5-1969 on the left hand column and the cheques received by it on the right hand column. When the clearing house representative of the Central Bank of India goes to the clearing house he should have had the left hand column filled up and thereafter on receiving the various cheques from other banks and checking them up with the books from those banks brought by the clearing, house representatives of those banks as also the vouchers brought by them make the entries on the right hand side of Exhibit 5. On that day the Central Bank of India delivered cheques worth Rs. 160,31,043.50 and received cheques worth Rupees 189,31,205.26. Therefore it had to pay Rs. 29,00,161.76. On the same day in the Special Clearing House the Central Bank of India delivered cheques worth Rs. 4,43,233.67 and received cheques worth Rs. 1,51,396.77. There was therefore a credit of Rs. 2,91,836.90 in favour of the Central Bank of India and clearing receipt thereof is Exhibit 6. Exhibit 7 shows the clearing house receipt in favour of the Reserve Bank of India of Rs. 2900161.76 to which we referred earlier, Exhibits 9 and 10 are authorisations to either debit or credit the account of the Central Bank of India in respect of the sums just now mentioned. A mere mention of the duties of the clearing house representative will show how important his duties are. Rule 12 (a) of the Calcutta Clearing House Rules provides: