DWARKA PRASAD, J. - (1.) THIS writ petition can be disposed of on a very short point without entering into the merits of the claim of the petitioner.
(2.) IT is the admitted-case of the parties that the petitioner was an employee of the Kota Central Co-operative Bank Ltd. Kota (hereinafter referred to as "the Bank") and that he was removed from the service of the Bank with effect from Aug. 1, 1957 by the order dated July 30,1957 on the ground that owing to the curtailment of the work of the Bank, the services of the petitioner were no longer required and the management of the Bank decided to retrench the Deti-tioner from the service of the Bank. The petitioner approached the Registrar Co-operative Societies, Rajasthan, Jaipur by way of a claim petition under Sec. 61 of the Rajasthan Co-operative Societies Act, 1953 (hereinafter called as "the Act") and claimed re-instatement with full back wages, on the ground that the petitioner was not awarded retrenchment compensation at the time when the notice dispensing with his services was served upon him and, thus, the provisions of Secs. 25F and 25J of the Industrial Disputes Act were violated. The Registrar, Co-operative Societies, referred the matter to an Arbitrator, who by his order dated February 29, 1968 accepted the claim of the petitioner in part and although the Arbitrator did not pass an order regarding the re-instatement of the petitioner in the service of the Bank, yet he awarded the petitioner 15 months' salary as gratuity, by way of compensation and Rs. 60/- as costs. IT may be observed here that reinstatement was not allowed by the Arbitrator in view of the fact that the petitioner had already attained the age of supernnua-tion i.e. 55 years, even before the Arbitrator decided the matter. The petitioner, however, was not satisfied with the order passed by the Arbitrator and preferred an appeal before the Rajasthan State Co-operative Tribunal, Jaipur (hereinafter referred to as "the Tribunal). The Bank also filed cross-objections before the Tribunal. The Tribunal, by its order dated May 15, 1969, dismissed both, the appeal of the petitioner as well as the cross-objections preferred by the Bank. One of the main grounds which led the Tribunal to dismiss the appeal of the petitioner was that the rights under the Industrial Disputes Act could not be enforced by the petitioner nor a relief could be claimed on that basis before the Arbitrator or the Tribunal, acting under the provisions of the Act. The petitioner has filed this writ petition against the aforesaid decision passed by the Tribunal. At this late stage in the day it cannot now be argued that the rights or obligations, which are created by or under the Industrial Disputes Act, could be made available to a person either in a civil suit or in a proceeding under the Act. The matter has been set at rest by the authoritative pronouncement of their Lordships of the Supreme Court in the Premier Automobiles Ltd. vs. Kamlakar Santaram Wadke(l), wherein the principles applicable to the jurisdiction of Civil Courts have been enshrined by their Lordships of the Supreme Court, in relation to an industrial dispute, as under: - "(1) If the dispute is not an industrial dispute, nor does it relate to enforcement of any other right under the Act, the remedy lies only in the civil court. 2. If the dispute is an industrial dispute arising out of a right or liability under the general common law and not under the Act, the jurisdiction of the Civil Court is alternative, leaving it to the election of the suitor concerned to choose his remedy for the relief which is competent to be granted in a particular remedy. 3. If the industrial dispute relates to the enforcement of a right or an obligation created under the Act, then the only remedy available to the suitor is to get an adjudication under the Act. 4. If the right which is sought to be enforced is a right created under the Act such as Chapter VA then the remedy for its enforcement is either Section 33C or the raising of an industrial dispute, as the case may be. (Itelic added) It is not disputable that the case of the petitioner is fully covered by the third principle laid down by their Lordships of the Supreme Court and reproduced above, as in the present case the right or obligation, the enforcement of which is claimed by the petitioner, has been created by the Industrial Disputes Act and as such the only remedy available to the petitioner to get an adjudication in respect of his alleged right was under the provisions of the Industrial Disputes Act. It cannot be said that the petitioner, in the present case, desired the enforcement of a common law right or a right which arose out of the provisions of the Co-operative Societies Act and as such neither a Civil Court nor an Authority or Tribunal constituted under the Co-operative Societies Act, is entitled to give any relief to the petitioner in enforcement of his alleged right of reinstatement with full back wages. In the Gujarat State Co-operative Land Development Bank Ltd. vs. P. N. Mankad (2), the matter has been further clarified by their Lordships of the Supreme Court and it has been held that one of the tests to determine whether there is any dispute touching the constitution or business of the society is that if the bar contained in the provisions of the Act would not have existed, the person could have claimed a relief by filing a suit in a Civil Court for the enforcement of his right. In the aforesaid case, their Lordships of the Supreme Court held that if the rights claimed by a person were those which were conferred on workmen and employees under the Industrial Disputes Act in order to ensure social justice, such rights could only be enforced in a Labour Court or a Tribunal constituted under the Industrial Disputes Act. The following observations of their Lordships in the aforesaid case may be pertinently extracted in this context: - "The respondent is not claiming a civil right arising from the contract of employment with the appellant-Bank What he is claiming is not enforcement of any term of the contract of his employment on the part of his employer. He is alleging that his services have deen terminated unfairly and vindictively because of his legitimate trade union activities as an act of victimisation. The relief claimed by him is of re-instatement in service with back wages. The rights and reliefs which he is claiming could not be determined and granted by a civil court in a suit...................In substance, it was an industrial dispute. It was not restricted to a claim under the contract or agreement of employment. The Civil Court cannot grant the reliefs claimed by the second respondent. As rightly submitted by Mr. Rama Reddy, if a Court is incapable of granting the relief claimed, normally, the proper construction would be that it is incompetent to deal with the matter."
(3.) IN view of the aforesaid pronouncements of their Lordships of the Supreme Court it can undoubtedly be held that the relief of re-instatement with full back wages claimed by the petitioner, on the basis of the alleged violation of certain provisions of the INdustrial Disputes Act, could not be granted to him either by a Civil Court or by an Authority or Tribunal constituted under the Co-operative Societies Act. The finding of the Tribunal in this respect must, therefore, be upheld.) Consequently, the writ petition has no force and the same is dismissed. However, the parties are left to bear their own costs of the present proceedings.;