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Judgment
Mahesh Grover, J.—This writ petition has been filed by the petitioner which is a cooperative society seeking a writ in the nature of certiorari to quash the award dated 21.7.1998. Briefly stated, the facts may be noted. Respondent No. 2 was working as a Secretary with the petitioner/Society when certain acts of omission and commission were detected by the Society and the matter was referred to the Arbitrator in respect of the money disputes and various awards were given against the said respondent No. 2.
Upon such awards having been made, when the Society contemplated action against respondent No. 2, he started absenting himself and did not join his duties.
He then claimed a reference under the Industrial Disputes Act bearing No. 335 of 1987 which he withdrew and then filed another reference bearing No. 222 of 1989 which was also withdrawn. Another reference bearing No. 813 of 1991 was claimed by him which was referred to the Tribunal for adjudication. It is this reference which has been answered by the Tribunal and which is the cause of grievance of the petitioner.
A question which the Tribunal was required to answer, was to the following effect:--
Whether termination of services of Kaka Singh, workman, is justified and in order? If not, to what relief/exact amount of compensation is he entitled ?
Respondent No. 2 in his statement of claim had said that his services had been terminated on 31.5.1984 without any notice, charge-sheet or enquiry or payment of retrenchment compensation which was refuted by the petitioner who apart from questioning the maintainability of the reference, contended that respondent No. 2 had been absenting from his duties on account of detection of misappropriation of funds of the society. The notice dated 7.5.1984 was sent to him which he refused to accept.
The Tribunal concluded that there was no disciplinary enquiry held against respondent No. 2/ workman and that his services had been terminated without any notice or retrenchment compensation and thus held the action of the petitioner to be bad. The reference was thus, answered in favour of the workman and he was held entitled to 25% of the back-wages and reinstatement in service with continuity of service.
Learned counsel for the petitioner has contended that the award is erroneous and it had been established in the award that the respondent/workman had embezzled the money and for this reason, there was no necessity of holding an enquiry and even otherwise, in the proceedings before the Tribunal, the representative of the workman had not cross-examined the witnesses of the Management on the issue of holding of enquiry and other related aspects and this itself was sufficient for the Tribunal to have taken into account this particular aspect of the matter to uphold the action of the Management as the statement of the Management witnesses went unchallenged. He has further contended that the awards of the Arbitrator which were exhibited, were established before the Tribunal by the evidence on record which were sufficient to justify the action of the petitioner.
On the other hand, learned counsel for the respondents has contended that there was absolutely no infirmity in the award as it has been established beyond any doubt that the services of the respondent/workman had been terminated without any enquiry or notice.
I have considered the issue before me and the record which has been made available during the course of hearing.
The main stay of the argument of the learned counsel for the petitioner is that Jarnail Singh who was the Secretary of the Society, had given details of the awards in which the financial irregularities committed by the respondent/workman had been established and when the opportunity to cross-examine this evidence was offered to the workman, he chose not to do so and thus, his statement should be accepted as correct and the Tribunal not having referred to this material, has committed a grave error.
Undeniably, no enquiry was held against the respondent/workman. He was never confronted with the charge-sheet and never subjected to any disciplinary proceedings.
Likewise, there is nothing to suggest that any notice was served upon him before terminating his services.
Assuming that the petitioner had justifiably not held any enquiry in view of the financial irregularities, it was still within its rights to invoke the jurisdiction of the Tribunal u/s 11A of the Industrial Disputes Act to which procedure, the petitioner did not have any recourse to.
In this view of the matter, there is hardly any plea of the petitioner which can be appreciated In law. Besides, the awards which have been referred to, all came into existence after the alleged termination of the respondent/workman on 31.5.1984. Exhibits M.17, M.18, M.19, M.20, M.23 and M.24 are all awards or further proceedings pursuant to the award which are subsequent to the dates of termination in May, 1984. It is thus, evident that there was no material to show that the action of the petitioner in terminating the services of the respondent/workman was not arbitrary or justified. The action being without any basis and without even paying lip service to the process of law cannot be sustained. There has thus been, a total abandonment of principles of natural justice and in view of this, the findings recorded by the Tribunal cannot be termed to be erroneous.
The writ petition is therefore, dismissed.