- (1.) P .K. Balasubramanyan, CJ 1. This writ petition has been filed by the management of Kuya Colliery of M/s Bharat Coking Coal Ltd. challenging the award of the Central Government Industrial Tribunal (No. 2) at Dhanbad dated 8.4.93, Copy of the, award is marked Annexure -4. By the said award, the Tribunal directed the Company to give employment to 11 workmen within two months from the date of the publication of the award without back wages. According to the workmen, the 11 were originally appointed as permanent wagon loaders/truck loaders against permanent vacancies. They had been working continuously as wagon loaders/truck loaders and they had put in more than 240 days attendance in each calendar year. All the workmen had absented from duties without taking any prior leave and the management had removed their names from the muster roll without affording them any opportunity of being heard and without paying any retrenchment compensation. Their termination was illegal and arbitrary. At their instance, the dispute whether the action of the management in not giving employment to the 11 female wagon loaders was justified and if not what relief those workmen were entitled to, was referred to the Tribunal. The management raised the plea that none of the female workmen had been employed permanently, that they were employed for sometime only as causal workers, that none of them even completed 240 working days in any year, that they had left the employment voluntarily, that ten of them had left their causal jobs even in the year 1973, that last of them had left in the year 1976, that it was a voluntary abandon -merit of work and that there was nothing wrong in the action of the management, that the reference was bad, that it was belated and that the workmen concerned were not entitled to any relief.
(2.) THE Tribunal, after referring to the pleadings, purported to discuss the claim" of two of the workmen and purported to enter a finding that one of them had worked for 247 days and the other had worked only for less than 240 days. Even without considering the specific case of the others and even without any evidence on the side of the workmen in support of their claim, the Tribunal purported to hold that the retrenchment was bad for want of compliance with Section 25F of the Industrial Disputes Act. On that basis the Tribunal directed the management to give employment to all the concerned workmen. We find that the Tribunal has not properly applied its mind to the dispute referred to it for decisions and the questions that arose on the pleadings in the case. The management had clearly pleaded that the workmen were only causal employees and none of them had worked for 240 days or more in any given year. The management has also pleaded that ten of the workmen had stopped coming for work on their own, in the year 1973 and the eleventh worker had stopped coming for work in the year 1976. The management had also contended that the claim for re -engagement or further engagement for work was made long after the workmen had abandoned the work by themselves and under the circumstances, the workmen were not entitled to any relief. In the face of these pleadings, the burden was clearly on the workmen to establish that each one of them had worked for 240 days or more in a year so as to enable them to claim that Section 25F of the Act had been violated when their names were removed from the muster rolls. It is unfortunate that the Tribunal merely chose to discuss the case of two of the workmen and did not even specifically consider the case or claim of the other workmen. Even in respect of one of the two, the Tribunal found that the number of days for which she had worked was below 240 days in the given year. Really, that finding should have led to the Tribunal holding that workmen was not entitled to any relief. Similarly, the absence of evidence -on the side of the other nine workmen should also have led to the conclusion that they had failed to prove their claim. It is not seen that the workmen even cited the management to produce any book or register which they considered relevant to establish their claim. The management had produced the documents that it thought are necessary or sufficient and had shown that the said registers did not support the claim of the workmen that they had worked for more than 240 days in a year. The Tribunal also lost sight of the fact that the management had pleaded that it was case where the workmen had stopped coming for work and since they were causal labourers, no formalities had to be complied with and this was not a case of denial of employment.
(3.) ONE expects an Industrial Tribunal to be informed of the basic principles of law and the burden of proof that rested on the parties on the pleadings in a given case. The Tribunal, under the Industrial Disputes Act, has been empowered with the responsibility of deciding disputes arising under that Act conscientiously and properly. The Tribunal is not expected to forget the principles of law and pass a priori orders. To say the least, the award impugned this case is most unsatisfactory. In our view, the Tribunal has ignored the fundamentals and has failed to perform its duty properly. It has failed to see that the burden was on the workmen, in the circumstances of the case, to establish their claim that Section 25F of the Industrial Disputes Act did apply to them, that there was denial of employment and that they are entitled to relief. Since we consider the award to be patently erroneous, vitiated by abdication of jurisdiction by the Industrial Tribunal, non -application of mind and vitiated by a total erroneous approach, we are constrained to interfere with the award. We are satisfied that the award deserves to be quashed. It is necessary for the Tribunal to consider the claim of each of the workmen, to find whether the workman concerned has established that she had worked for the requisite number of days in the year and whether the concerned workman has not abandoned the work or had not stopped coming for work on her own. The Tribunal had also erred in not bearing in mind that the burden was on the workmen to establish their case.;