- (1.) THIS is a petition under Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution of India and the petitioner prays that the order passed by the Magistrate and upheld by the District Judge under Section 15, payment of Wages Act (4 of 1936) be quashed as they acted with material irregularity in rejecting the application made by the applicant under Section 15, Payment of Wages Act.
(2.) THE applicant was a ward keeper in the office of the District Controller of Stores, Alambagh, lucknow. He was in charge of certain stores and some items of the stores were found missing whereupon he was asked to make good the deficiency and the price of the articles lost which amounted to Rs. 883/2/- was ordered to be deducted in monthly instalments of Rs. 49/1/extending over a period from 1-6-1947 to 30-11-1948. The deductions were made. On 13-7-1950, an application was made under Section 15, Payment of Wages Act to the City magistrate Lucknow claiming that the deductions from his wages were improper and that the amount deducted should be paid back to him. This application was transferred by the City magistrate to the Additional City Magistrate (II ). It was again transferred to the City Magistrate and was ultimately disposed of by him. He rejected the application as time barred and the applicant then went in appeal to the District Judge. The District Judge held that no appeal lay against the order passed by the Magistrate and dismissed the appeal. The applicant has now come up to invoke the jurisdiction of this Court by a petition of writ.
(3.) IT has been contended on behalf of the applicant that the Magistrate was not within his jurisdiction to admit the plea of limitation, once the application had been admitted and that the subsequent order of dismissal of the application on a point of limitation was incompetent. The proviso to Section 15 (2), Payment of Wages Act is as follows : "provided that every such application shall be presented within six months from the date on which the deduction from the wages was made or from the date on which the payment of the wages was due to be made, as the case may be : Provided further that any application may be admitted after the said period of six months when the applicant satisfies the authority that he had sufficient cause for not making the application within such period. ";