BHASKARAN Vs. SUB DIVISIONAL OFFICER

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The three petitioners are casual mazdoors of the Posts and Telegraphs Department. In the year 1979 alone, they had worked for 304, 302 and 299 days before the end of October. Exts. P1 and R1 orders confer on them certain preferential claims in the matter of appointment as regular employees. Their first complaint in this writ petition is that the respondents have failed to recognise those claims. The second complaint is that their engagement as casual labourers was stopped from 1-11-79 under oral orders, contrary to the provisions of S.25F of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947.

(2.) Exts. P1 and R1 only confer some rights on casual employees to be absorbed as regular hands, as and when vacancies occur. The respondents have gone on record that the petitioners' rights would be recognised and given effect to, when vacancies arise. In view of this stand of the Department, it is unnecessary for this Court to give any directions in this regard

(3.) Turning to the second complaint, S 25F of the Industrial Disputes Act provides that no workman with continuous service for a year shall be retrenched without a month's notice and without payment of retrenchment compensation. S.25G obliges the employer to retrench only the juniormost, and S.25H insists that retrenched hands shall be given preference in the matter of re-employment. An oral order terminating engagement for the purpose of engaging others on a rotational basis and without payment of compensation, would certainly offend these provisions. And there is no dispute that this is what the respondents attempted to do But their case is that the Post and Telegraphs Department is not an industry as defined in the Industrial Disputes Act, and that S.25F, G and H are not attracted. They have a further case that even if the department is an industry, its employees governed by Service Rules framed under Art.309 of the Constitution stand outside the fold of the Act. The profvisions of the Act cannot apply to Government departments, even if they are carrying on industrial activities, it is said, so long as service conditions of the employees concerned are embodied in Service Rules.