BHARAT PROCESS AND MECHANICAL ENGINEERS LIMITED ASSISTANTS APPRENTICE Vs. BHARAT PROCESS AND MECHANICAL ENGINEERS LIMITED

JUDGEMENT

(1.) IN terms of the provisions of Bird and Co. Ltd. (Acquisition and Transfer of Undertakings and Other Properties) Act, 1980 (Act No. 67 of 1980), the undertakings of the Bird and Co. and the right, title and interest of the Company in relation to its undertakings stood transferred to and vested in the Central Government on and since 25th October 1980. In this writ petition, the petitioners challenge the revision and rationalisation of pay scales of the Officers of Bharat Process Mechanical Engineers and Waybird India Ltd. (henceforth to be referred to as the 'said Company' ).

(2.) SECTION 11 (1) of the Act of I198g noted above provides that every employee of the Company employed in connection with any undertakings owned by it, shall, on and from the appointed day, become an employee of the Central Government and where such undertaking is vested in a Government Company under the Act, become on and from the date of such vesting in such Government Company, an employee thereof and, shall hold office or service under the Central Government, or the Government. Company, as the case may be, with same rights and privileges as to pension, gratuity and other matters as would, have been admissible to him, if there had been no such vesting and shall continue to be unless and until his employment under the Central government of the Government Company, as the case may be, is duly terminated or until his remuneration and other conditions of service are duly altered by the Central Government or the Government company, as the case may be.

(3.) THE petitioner no. 1 is an organisation of the Officer-employees of the then Bird and Co. Prior to 1980, all the officer-employees except the Chief Executive of the Company were designated as Assistants irrespective of the nature of work carried out by them. Each of the officer-employees were appointed on the basis of letters of appointment containing certain standard terms and conditions and the petitioners contended that it was a condition of service of Officer-employees of the Company that annual increment would be made available to the Officer-employees. The documents relied upon by the petitioners corroborate such state of affairs that there was in fact an annual increment of about Rs. 100/- to every Officer-employee of the then bird and Co. Ltd.