- (1.) LEAVE granted.
(2.) THESE appeals arise out a common order dated 11th December, 2008 passed by a Division Bench of the High Court of Madhya Pradesh at Jabalpur whereby a batch of writ petitions filed by the appellant challenging a common order dated 18th December, 2002 passed by the Labour Court and that passed in appeal by the Industrial Court, Bhopal, have been dismissed. The respondents in all these petitions claim to have been affected by the poisonous gas leak incident in Bhopal. Their case is that they were as a measure of rehabilitation employed as daily -wagers at the Training - cum -Production Centre under the Department of Industries, Government of Madhya Pradesh, as early as in the year 1985. That Centre was later transferred to the Madhya Pradesh State Industrial Corporation and eventually to State Government Press. According to the respondents they were initially trained in binding, cutting, punching etc. and that they have been doing that work ever since their employment on a daily -wage basis under the administrative control and supervision of the Controller and the Deputy Controller of the Printing and Stationery Press, Maida Mill Road, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh.
(3.) IN pursuit of regularisation of their services, the respondents appear to have approached the M.P. State Administrative Tribunal at Jabalpur in O.A. No.3493 of 1990 which was dismissed by the Tribunal holding that it had no jurisdiction to entertain the same as the respondents were not employees/civil servants under the State Government. The respondents assailed the order passed by the Tribunal in W.P. NO.4329 of 1997 through their Association (Gas Pidit Mahila Stationery Karmachari Sangh) which petition too failed and was dismissed in terms of an order dated 8th October, 1999 by the High Court. The respondents then preferred Application No.442/MPIR/2000 before the Labour Court at Bhopal in which they once again claimed regularisation of their services and payment of differential amount upon regularisation as junior binders. The claim was opposed by the appellants herein on several grounds giving rise to as many as eight issues before the Labour Court, who answered the same in favour of the respondents and by its order dated 18th December, 2002 and directed the appellant herein to classify the respondents as junior binders on regular basis w.e.f. 29th April, 1998 and to grant them the pay scale as also the difference of salary admissible to the post of a junior binder.;