BHANWAR LAL Vs. STATE OF RAJASTHAN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE petitioner has stated that he was appointed as a Mistry in the Power House and Pumping Sub -division of the Chambal Project at Kota on January 1, 1957. He was transferred to the Chambal workshop from April 1, 1964. He was then taken on the work -charged establishment as a Time Keeper with effect from July 9, 1964. He has stated that he became the President of Chambal Workshop Karamchari Sangh, Kota, and fought for the rights and privileges of the workers, which annoyed his superiors as well as the State Government. A retrenchment notice was served on him on April 26, 1967, but he made a representation and that notice was withdrawn. However another notice (Ex. P/2) of retrenchment was issued on January 16, 1968, on the ground that the work in stage II of the Project was nearing completion and the services of the petitioner were not required with effect from February 20, 1968. The petitioner made representations against that notice also, but to no avail. He has therefore challenged the order of his retrenchment in the present writ petition, on a number of grounds, and I shall refer to those of the grounds which have been selected by his learned Counsel for my consideration.

(2.) THE respondent State has traversed the claim of the petitioner altogether and has stated that the petitioner was retrenched in accordance with the law. The petitioner has filed a rejoinder.

(3.) THE question therefore is whether the petitioner could be said to belong to the cadre or category of Mistris even after his appointment as a Time Keeper? The petitioner has however not placed on record any data or facts on the basis of which it could be inferred that the posts of Time Keeper and Mistri were in the same cadre or category. Seniority list Ex. P/11 has however been placed on the record by the petitioner, and in that list the posts of Time Keepers, Mistris and Store Munshi have been mentioned as separate categories or separate cadre, and the seniority in each such category or cadre has been assigned separately. Moreover it may be said that the post of a Mistry requires qualifications and experience of a nature different from that of Time Keeper, and as the petitioner has not ventured to state how they were posts of the same category, the argument of his learned Counsel that this was so cannot be accepted. It may be that the posts were equivalent in so far as the emoluments were concerned, but that would not be sufficient reason to hold that they belonged to the same category. There is therefore no justification for the argument that persons who were employed as Mistris after the petitioner should have been retrenched and not the petitioner. In this view of the matter, B.N. Eliss and Company v. Fifth Industrial Tribunal : (1965)IILLJ324Cal , on which reliance has been placed by learned Counsel for the petitioner, can be of no avail to him. It may also be mentioned that if the petitioner wanted to press his plea that the posts of Time Keepers and Mistris belonged to the same cadre or category, and that persons who were junior to him in that cadre or category should have been retrenched and not the petitioner, it was necessary for him to implead those Mistris as party respondents so that this Court could be in a position to hear and decide the controversy once for all. But this has not been done. So as the case stands, it is not possible to take the view that the petitioner belonged to the cadre or category of Mistris even though he was a Time Keeper. As the employer had a separate cadre or category of Time Keepers, and as the petitioner was the junior most in that cadre or category, it cannot be said that his retrenchment has been ordered in contravention of the relevant provisions of Rule 23 of the Rules or Section 25G of the Act.