- (1.) The petitioner-company impugns the order of the Labour Court, Jullundur, dated 2.8.1977 (Annexure P-7) whereby the domestic enquiry held by it against the worker Vidya Sagar (respondent No. 2) has been held to be not fair and proper. In the normal course, I would have been reluctant to exercise my jurisdiction under Articles 226/227 of the Constitution in looking into the merits of an order of this type but Mr. N.K. Sodhi, the learned counsel for the petitioner, contends that the reasons given by the Labour Court to come to the above-noted conclusion are wholly extraneous and unsustainable because they are not based on the material on record. In order to appreciate the contention of the learned counsel, the following facts deserve to be noticed:- On 30.3.1974 a communication (Annexure P-1) was made by the workshop incharge of the petitioner-company to its General Manager intimating that respondent No. 2, Vidya Sagar, Head Mistry had committed some irregularities and when he asked him (respondent No. 2) on 15.3.1974 to explain the aforesaid irregularities and lapses on his part, the later absented himself from duty with effect from 16.3.1974 and did not turn up since then. On the basis of this information, the petitioner-company sent a registered notice (Annexure P-4) to the worker on 17.8.1974 asking him to appear him before Shri M.L. Saini, who had been appointed as an Enquiry Officer, on 23.8.1974 at 3 a.m. to answer the charges levelled against him, including the one about his absence from duty. It deserves to be pointed out here that prior to the issuance of this notice by the petitioner company, the respondent-worker had already served a demand notice on it on 4.4.1974 complaining about the alleged wrong termination of his services. As a matter of fact, he even succeeded in seeking a reference (Annexure P-2) under Section 10 of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 (for short the Act). During the course of proceedings that followed this reference, the petitioner-company pleaded, vide Annexure P-3 dated 30.8.1974, before the Labour Court that, as a matter of fact, the whole reference was pre-mature as it had never terminated the services of the respondent-worker and only an enquiry had been instituted against him for his alleged misconduct and till the conclusion of that enquiry, no action was proposed to be taken against the respondent-worker. This plea of the petitioner-company was accepted by the Labour Court and the reference was held to be pre-mature. It was subsequent to this order of the Labour Court that the notice dated 17.8.1974 (Annexure P-4), referred to above, was sent by the petitioner-company to respondent No. 2 since respondent No. 2 failed to take part in the proceedings held by Shri M.L. Saini, Enquiry Officer, the services of respondent No. 2 were terminated on 27.1.1975. On a dispute having been raised by the latter, another reference under Section 10 of the Act was made by the Government and as a result of that reference, the impugned order (Annexure P-7) has been passed by the Labour Court. For recording the conclusion, as indicated above, the Court came to the conclusion that the domestic enquiry held by Shri M.L. Saini against the respondent worker was "to counteract the workman's claim for adjudication" and it is on that account that the enquiry was held to be not fair and proper. It is difficult to understand the logic of this conclusion of the Labour Court. As has already been indicated, the petitioner-company had already succeeded on forestalling the earlier reference made by the Government under Section 10 of the Act with the plea that the same was pre-mature as no action, much less the termination of the services of the respondent-worker had been taken by that time.
(2.) Having succeeded in those proceedings, what was to be "counter-acted" by the petitioner by holding the domestic enquiry against respondent No. 2 has not anywhere been explained by the Labour Court. For holding that the enquiry against respondent No. 2 was not fair, the Labour Court has not recorded any circumstances or conclusion except the one referred to above. It has nowhere been found that the enquiry was bad on any other ground than the one that it was instituted to counteract the workman's claim for adjudication. In the light of this conclusion of mine, it is difficult to sustain the impugned order of the Labour Court. I, therefore, set aside the same. But since the Labour Court has not dealt with the material or the evidence on record before it, I send the case back to it to proceed to decide the same in accordance with law. It is made clear that none of the aforesaid observation of mine about the factual aspect of the matter, would be taken by the Labour Court as conclusive and it would be free to reach its independent conclusion on merits. The parties, through their counsel, are directed to appear before the Labour Court on 15th July, 1983. I pass no order as to costs. Order of Labour Court quashed.;