AMRELI MUNICIPALITY Vs. PARMAR JIVRAJBHAI RAMJIBHAI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The present Special Civil Application challenges award dtd. 5/3/2008 passed by Labour Court, Amreli in Reference (LCA) No.22 of 2002 whereby the Labour Court has allowed the reference preferred by the respondent workman and reinstated him in service with 20% back-wages.

(2.) The brief facts leading to filing of the present petition are as follows :-

(3.) Learned advocate Mr. Y. V. Shah appearing for the petitioner Municipality has submitted that the respondent workman was appointed by the President of the petitioner Municipality without any sanction of the appointing authority of the General Board and he was not appointed against any sanctioned vacant post on the establishment set up sanctioned by the State Government. He has therefore submitted that since the respondent workman was not appointed by following any due procedure of law, he had no right to be reinstated. He has submitted that the respondent was engaged as a daily-wager and he was working in the Octroi Department which was closed since the State Government had abolished octroi with effect from 1/5/2001 and since the levy of octroi was abolished by the State Government, only permanent octroi staff as far as possible could be accommodated by the petitioner Municipality as per the government policy and therefore, the daily-wagers like the respondent workman were terminated since there was excess staff. It was further submitted that the excess staff was required to be terminated since the establishment expenditure of the petitioner Municipality was also excessive at about 70% beyond the permissible limit of 45% of the sanctioned expenditure. Therefore also, the respondent workman could not be continued in service. It was submitted that the respondent workman was engaged on the basis of need of work and therefore, his termination cannot be stretched so as to invoke the provisions of Sec. 25(F) of the Industrial Disputes Act. It was also submitted that the provisions of Ss. 25(F) , 25(G) and 25(H) of the Industrial Disputes Act are not applicable in the present case when the respondent workman was not appointed on any sanctioned vacant post by due selection procedure and that his recruitment was made by incompetent authority. It was also submitted that the basic work of the respondent workman was in the implementation of government grant schemes which were not in the nature of regular work and that he was appointed for a fixed period for fixed work. Learned advocate Mr. Vyas for the petitioner Municipality has also relied upon the judgments of this Court in [I] (2003) 2 GHJ (397) [II] AIR 2008 SC 449 and [III] 2004 (2) CLR 511 on the proposition that for Class-IV employee, the recruitment rules is pre-condition and that the provisions of Sec. 25(F) cannot be invoked in the case of daily-wager employees whose appointments are without following due procedure laid down in the statutory recruitment policy.