- (1.) PANKAJ Mithal, J. This batch of writ petitions under Section 226 of the Constitution of India involves a similar controversy based upon identical facts and as such are being taken up together with the consent of the respective Counsel appearing for the contesting parties.
(2.) THE brief background leading to the filing of these petitions is that the Life Insurance Corporation of India (in short LIC) for promotion of its business interest launched a "salary saving scheme," particularly, for the salaried class of people viz. , Government and semi Government employees and the employees of the various Corporations etc. THE scheme provides for the payment of monthly pre mium by the assured employees. THE scheme is optional and under it the em ployees subscribing to the scheme have an option to pay the LIC premium either directly or through their respective employers to the LIC on monthly basis. THE employees in making such a payment through the employer have a definite ad vantage of rebate of 5% on payment of such premium. Apparently, there is no advantage to the employers in taking the responsibility of deducting the LIC pre mium from the monthly salary of its employees and to make the lump sum pay ment to the LIC. It appears that as deduction of LIC premium on authorization of the employees is legally permissible from the wages of the employees in view of Section 7 (d) of the Payment of Wages Act, 1936 (in short Wages Act), most of the employers initially agreed for making such deduction and in making payment of lump sum premium to the LIC on behalf of the employees, but later on account of the amount of extra work and accounting involved in it, they realised the mis take and evolved methods to withdraw from the responsibility. The petitioners in this batch of writ petitions are all employees of Railways. All of them have individually taken the above policy from the LIC and has autho rized the Railways to make deduction of the LIC premium from their monthly salary for payment to the LIC. The Railways till now had been making the deduc tion and paying the premium to the LIC collectively on behalf of its employees. However, by the impugned order dated 30th April 2007 followed by the conse quential order dated 2/3. 7. 2007 the Railways have decided not to make such a deduction in future from the monthly salary of its employees including the peti tioners for payment to the LIC. It is against this action of the Railways that the petitioners have individually come up before this Court in writ jurisdiction. Ave heard Sri Siddhartha Srivastava, learned Counsel for the petitioners, Sri Govind Saran and Sri Vivek Singh for the Railways and Sri Prakash Padia, Sri R. C. Shukla, Sri V. K. Chandel and Sri Sanjeev Singh for the LIC.
(3.) A preliminary objection has been raised jointly on behalf of the Railways and the LIC that the Court has no jurisdiction to entertain these writ petitions directly without first relegating the petitioners to the Central Administrative Tribu nal, in as much as, the matter relates to the service of the employees of the Indian Railways. In support reliance has been placed upon L Chandra Kumar v. Union of India and others, AIR 1997 SC 1125, To meet the above preliminary objection, Sri Siddhartha Srivastava learned Counsel appearing for petitioners has argued that first of all it is not a service matter as defined under Section 3 (q) of the Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985 (hereinafter referred to as Tribunals Act ). Secondly, even if it happens to be a service matter, the jurisdiction of the High Court under Article 226 is not completely ousted and the High Court is within its jurisdiction to entertain such petitions, if they fall within the 3 exceptional catego ries particularly when no factual dispute is involved, namely (i) where the order is completely without jurisdiction; ' (ii) it has been passed in violation of the principles of natural justice; and (iii) where it is apparently an order passed contrary to any provision of a statute. In the light of the submissions made on the preliminary objection two points as under arises for determination: (1) Whether the High Court has jurisdiction to directly entertain writ peti tions, concerning the 'service matter' of the Railway employees; and (2) Whether the action of the Railways in refusing to make deduction of LIC premium from the monthly salary of its employees would fall within the ambit of the 'service matter' as defined under Section 3 (q) of the Tribunals Act.;