SHIVABAI Vs. STATE OF KARNATAKA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) employee of the state irrigation department. The grievance projected is that the petitioner's husband having died while in service on 23-1-1995, and the petitioner being a widow with two minor children, was immediately faced with a serious financial crisis. She therefore, applied to the authorities for settlement of the terminal benefits of her deceased husband. According to her, despite several requests made to the department, the benefits in question were not made available to her. She even alludes to the fact that on a complaint to the chief engineer, that a direction was issued to settle the necessary dues despite which, she is being sent from department to department and even though seven months have elapsed since the date of death, she has so far not received any of the terminal benefits. Under these circumstances, she has filed the present petition and the only prayer is that the respondents be directed to settle the dues forthwith.

(2.) notice had not been given to the respondents, but I directed the learned government Advocate to take notice on behalf of the respondents. There is nothing factual that requires to be gone into, but the learned government Advocate drew my attention to the fact that this being a dispute in relation to the non-payment of service benefits, that the jurisdiction of the trial court is now transferred to the Karnataka administrative tribunal and that consequently, this court ought not to entertain the petition. The learned government Advocate draws my specific attention to Section 15(l)(c) of the administrative tribunals Act, 1985, which reads as follows:

(3.) the submission canvassed by the learned government Advocate is that reading Section 15 along with sections 28 and 29 of the Act, not only is there a transfer of jurisdiction to the tribunal in respect of service disputes, but that conversely the jurisdiction of the High Court in relation to this class of matters is expressly barred. He therefore, submits that even assuming the petitioner has a grievance, that this court must direct the petitioner to address that grievance to the service tribunal and should refuse to entertain the present petition: