- (1.) R. K. Mahajan, J. This is a" writ' peti tion moved by District Co-operative Federation Limited seeking direction in the nature of certiorari quashing the order dated 8-6-1984 communicated on 31-1-1987 (Annexure No. 1 to the writ petition) and the award dated 29-9-1981 passed by the respondent No. 1 (Annexure No. 2 to the writ petition ). A prayer has been fur ther made not to give effect to the im pugned award by issuing a writ of man damus, it may be mentioned at the out set that the respondent No. 3 who was employed as Manager in a Cold Storage under the control of the petitioner on 5-4-1978 was terminated later on as post of Manager-cum-Engineer was created by circular dated 29-1-1987 after amalgamat ing the post of Manager with the Engineer. It may be mentioned that Shri P. N. Shukla was appointed on purely temporary' basis Later on he was terminated on the basis of resolution of Committee of Management dated 23-2-1979. It appears that the matter of termination was submitted on a refer ence made by Shri P. N. Shukla to the Deputy Registrar Co-operative Societies U. P. , Agra against the District Co-opera tive Federation, Mathura. It further ap pears that Deputy Registrar appointed Regional Assistant Registrar, Agra as sole arbitrator and referred the dispute for ad judication. The arbitrator gave an award in favour of Shri Shukla and declared the termination order void. The matter was taken up in the appeal before the com petent authority and which was dismissed by the order dated 8-6-1984 (Annexure No. 1 ).
(2.) FEELING aggrieved the management has filed this writ petition. At the time of hearing only Counsel for the petitioner appeared. Learned Counsel for the respondent was not present. Counter-af fidavit has been filed by the wife of Shri Shukla as Shri Shukla is no more in this world. She has pleaded that Shri Shukla was appointed against the regular vacancy and it was not stated at the time of termination that the termination was done on account of new development i. e. amalgamation of post as referred above and he was not qualified to be appointed. It is alleged in the counter-affidavit that Shri Shukla was pressed hard to accept the potato stock for storage beyond the storage capacity against which the Manager protested in view of this proposed storage as any mishap in the Cold Storage was the matter of his techni cal responsibility and also the administra tive responsibility. The management was communicated as he did not accommodate storage of 28995 bags of potato. In other words the case of respondent No. 3 is that her husband Shri Shukla was terminated on account of prejudice and antagonism and amalgamation of post is just a trick to shunt him out. I have gone through the record carefully and also the award. Shri K. N. Mishra, learned Counsel for the petitioner advanced legal proposi tion of law that termination of Shri Shukla is on is "business" within the meaning of Section 70 of the U. P. Co-operative Societies Act, 1965 (hereinafter referred to as the Act of 1965) and the award is a nullity and without jurisdiction. He has further submitted that the remedy avail able to the petitioner was under Section 128 of Act 0/1965 which deals with powers of Registrar to annul the resolution or cancel the order passed by an officer of Co-operative Society in certain cases. He has further submitted that the matter was squarely covered under Regulation 29 of U. P. Co-operative Societies Employees Service Regulations, 1975 (hereinafter referred to as the Regulations) which deals with the termination of an employee when the work is reduced and expenditure is excessive.
(3.) AFTER hearing learned Counsel for the petitioner and giving thoughtful con sideration I refuse to interfere in the award passed by the respondent No. 1 on the following reasoning: Firstly, the matter relates to the case of more than two decades old. The widow, respondent No. 3, is a helpless lady. There is no resources for her income, as stated in the counter-affidavit. Second ly, later Shri Shukla joined as Manager in response to advertisement and he was found to be qualified when his appoint ment as Manager was done. Later on he did not oblige to store more potatoes in the Cold Storage then he was shunted out from service. If the veil is lifted from the order it is stigmatic and entails civil conse quences. It was then thought that En gineer be given charge of Manager and before termination he was not given any chance to defend his case and fair proce dure was also not adopted. In fact Article 21 of the Constitution of India lays down that nobody should be terminated except following the procedure prescribed by law. A person cannot be deprived of his livelihood without fair procedure and fair hearing. Protection has been given by Constitution of India under Article 21 read with Article 14 that if the act of depriving livelihood is arbitrary the same can be struck down and I am of the view that it was arbitrary and the Arbitrator's finding cannot be assailed on this ground. The question that the matter could be referred to the Arbitrator for arbitration is purely a technical as the management should not have acquiesced to the jurisdic tion.;