DEPOT MANAGER, APSRTC Vs. P.PRABHAKAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This writ petition is filed by the petitioner Corporation (APSRTC) assailing the award dated 10.05.2006 in I.D. No. 398 of 2002 passed by the 5th respondent Labour Court, which modified the order of the appellate authority of the Corporation and which directed the Corporation to pay to the workman the back wages, apart from all other benefits, since the workman stood reinstated earlier by the appellate authority. In fact, the appellate authority, in the first instance, modified the original order of removal from service passed by the disciplinary authority.

(2.) The facts in brief are that the 1st respondent workman, since deceased, was originally appointed in the year, 1973, as a Booking Clerk in the petitioner Corporation, and later got promoted as Conductor in the year, 1974. He was further promoted as Assistant Depot Clerk/Controller in the year, 1984. While so, on 17.09.1991, the deceased workman was charge sheeted on the ground that he was unauthorisedly absent from duty from 30.08.1991 to 05.09.1991. In the departmental enquiry, that ensued in the wake of the charge sheet, the workman was found guilty of major misconduct of unauthorized absence in terms of the regulations of the Corporation and was eventually, through an order dated 02.01.1992, removed from service by the Disciplinary Authority. When the deceased workman took recourse to intra-departmental appeal, the appellate authority, in fact, through order dated 24.02.1992, modified the order of removal from service to that of reinstatement, but by reverting the workman from Controller to the post of Conductor for a period of two years and directed the workman to report to duty at Kuppam depot. Though there is an element of dispute what subsequently transpired, presently it could be stated that when the deceased workman went to Kuppam Depot and tried to report for duty, he was told by the authorities that they had no information regarding his reinstatement. After repeated attempts to report to duty, the deceased workman eventually filed W.P. No. 3502 of 1992, questioning the modified award of punishment imposed by the appellate authority.

(3.) After a decade, the said writ petition was disposed of on 12.09.2002, directing the workman to raise his grievance in the Labour Court by invoking the necessary provisions of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 ('the Act', for brevity). Thereafter, the workman raised an industrial dispute before the Labour Court in I.D. No. 398 of 2002. Ostensibly he approached the Labour Court by invoking Section 2-A of the Act, which is available only to those workmen whose services have been terminated etc. The deceased workman's was not a case of termination, in the face of modification effected by the appellate authority.