THE HON'BLE SRI JUSTICE GOPALA KRISHNA TAMADA Writ Petition No.1899 of 2010 ORDER: 1 The petitioner approached this court and filed the present Writ Petition with the following prayer: “For all the reasons stated above, it is prayed that this Hon’ble court may be pleased to issue a writ or order or direction more particularly one in the nature of Writ of Mandamus declaring that the action of respondents in not paying the gratuity amount to the petitioner for his out of employment period i.e. the date of removal to date of reinstatement (from 09.11.1977 to 29.07.1992) in concerned with his removal as illegal, bad, arbitrary and contrary to the judgments of this Hon'ble Court and consequently direct the respondents to pay the gratuity for the said period and pass such other order or orders.” 2 When the matter is taken up for hearing, both the counsel submitted that the subject matter of this Writ Petition is squarely covered by the judgment of this court in M.Rama Rao Vs. Assistant Traffic Manager, APSRTC, Hyderabad and another[1]. In the said case, which is identical to the present one this court held as under: “The Labour Court registered the said reference as I.D.No.88/82 and after adjudication it passed the award on 25.03.1985 and the operative portion of the award reads thus: “In the result, the order of removal passed against the petitioner is set aside. The respondent is directed to reinstate the petitioner into service forthwith, with continuity of service and all other attendant benefits. The petitioner is not entitled to any back wages. He is entitled to his wages from the date of this order. Award is passed accordingly”. The petitioner was reinstated into service as per the direction of the Labour court on 26.06.1985. The petitioner was retired from the service w.e.f. 30.09.1996 on attaining the age of superannuation. On retirement, the respondent did not pay the gratuity admissible to the petitioner taking into account the out of employment period i.e. from 22.04.1967 to 26.06.1985. Being aggrieved by the said action, the present writ petition is filed. The respondent have filed counter. In the counter, the management has contended that during 22.04.1967 to 22.06.1985, the petitioner was not in actual service and therefore, he is not entitled to claim gratuity for that period. The contention of the management is apparently untenable. Since the industrial court has granted to the petitioner the continuity of service, it should be held that for all practical purposes, the petitioner should be deemed to have been in continuous service although. If that is so, there is no justification to exclude the period between 22.04.1967 to 22.06.1985 for the purpose of computation of the gratuity payable to the petitioner. In the result, I dispose of the writ petition directing the respondents to compute the gratuity payable to the petitioner taking into account the out of employment period i.e. between 22.04.1967 to 22.06.1985 into account and after so computing to pay the balance of gratuity to the petitioner within a period of two months from the date of receipt of a copy of this order. No costs.” 3 In the light of the said consensus arrived at between the counsel, this Writ Petition is disposed of in the same terms of the above order. No costs. -------------- 25.02.2010 kvsn [1] 1998 (3) ALD 76