I.S. Tiwana, J. - (1.) Learned counsel for the parties are agreed that in view of the identity of facts and the contentions raised therein, these four Civil Writ Petition Nos. 3885, 3922, 3923 and 4028 of 1988 can conveniently be disposed of together. They are further agreed that for this purpose the factors stated in C.W.P. No. 3885 may be taken as fairly representative of the case of the other petitioners.
(2.) The three petitioners in this petition were initially employed as Management Trainees by the respondents Federation. Later, two of them, i.e., Nos. 2 and 3, became full fledged Managers, while No. 1 still continued to work as Trainee Incharge (Procurement and Inputs), Milk Union, Rohtak. They have two/three years service to their credit. Now they have gone out of service on account of abolition of their posts. To impugn the termination of their services, their learned counsel Mr. J.L. Gupta, Senior Advocate, has raised these three Principal contentions:- i) The resolution of the Federation, dated May 4, 1988, abolishing certain number of posts and more particularly those of the petitioners, lacks bonafides. ii) The Federation had no legal authority to abolish the posts and declare the service of the petitioners as surplus. This is more so in the light of the Directive Principles enshrined in Articles 38, 41 and 43 of the Constitution of India. iii) The abolition of the posts of the petitioners is violative of section 37 of the Haryana Co-operative Societies Act, 1984 as no prior permission of the Registrar, Co-operative Societies, Haryana was obtained to delete the class of employees like the petitioners from the common cadre.
(3.) As against this, the stand of the respondents, i.e., Haryana Dairy Development Co-operative Federation Limited and the Registrar, Co-operative Societies, Haryana, who filed a joint written statement, is, in their own words, as follows:- "The answering Federation incurred the accumulated losses of roughly about 27 crores of rupees as on June 30, 1987. (Copy of the balance-sheet is Annexure R.3 to the reply). The Federation, therefore, thought of taking measures to restrict their working to minimise the loss and to retrench the unnecessary staff which has been actually retrenched keeping its own working load. This retrenchment of the staff was necessary so that further losses are not incurred. The Federation, therefore, abolished certain jobs including the jobs of the 3 petitioners.......... Their services were terminated and they were given one month's salary in lieu of notice as provided in the terms of agreement...... They were junior most officers in the Federation......... Not only the services of these three petitioners have been terminated, besides services of 33 more employees have also been terminated. The process of terminating the services of others besides the above 36 employees continues. The Board actually came to the conclusion that over six hundred workers/supervisors can be retrenched being surplus. The steps to complete the process will definitely take further time.........As a part of better management, steps are underway to reduce the surplus staff." In order to establish its bonafides, the Federation has further pleaded:- "Keeping in view the accumulated losses as evidence from the balance sheet, economy measures were taken in order to relieve the Federation from the debt trap. An agenda as placed before the Board of Directors in the meeting held on 4.5.88 where it was made clear that total requirement of the staff at present was 1494 and already there was a strength of 1725 employees. Surplus/deficit staff to the extent of 636 and 405 respectively after making adjustment surplus staff remained around 250 only.......... The services of the employees were terminated strictly in accordance with law laid down by the Hon'ble Supreme Court 'last come first go' and the posts of Management Trainees as already stated above were abolished as no economy measure in the bonafide belief." In order to meet the challenge on the basis of Section 37 of the Co-operative Societies Act, it is stated that as abolition of posts has not led to deletion of any class or classes of employees, there is no violation of the section involved. There are many posts of Managers (Sales) against which senior incumbents to the writ petitioners are holding charge and have been retained.;