IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA AT CHANDIGARH Civil Writ Petition No.124 of 2006 Date of decision:20.10.2009 State of Haryana ...Petitioner versus Shri Ajaib Singh and another ...Respondents CORAM: HON’BLE MR. JUSTICE K. KANNAN ---- Present: Mr. D.S.Nalwa, Additional Advocate General, Haryana, for the petitioner. None for the respondent. ---- 1. Whether reporters of local papers may be allowed to see the judgment ? No. 2. To be referred to the reporters or not ? No. 3. Whether the judgment should be reported in the digest ? No. ---- K.Kannan, J. (Oral) 1. The award under challenge is a direction for reinstatement without continuity of service and without back wages. The claim of the workman was that he had been engaged on daily basis as Mali-cum- Chowkidar on 01.07.1988 and he was illegally terminated on 31.05.1989. He had issued a demand notice on 14.02.2002, which was referred for adjudication. The contention on behalf of the management was that the workman had barely worked for a year and he had abandoned the services. The claim was stale, having been made 12 years after the alleged termination and it was a case of abandonment from service. The Labour Court found that there was no valid reason given either in the claim statement or in evidence before the Court, but still Civil Writ Petition No.124 of 2006 - 2 - making reliance on the decision of the Hon'ble Supreme Court in Ajaib Singh Versus Sirhing Cooperative Marketing-cum-Processing Service Society Limited-1989(2) SCT 667 (SC), the Court found that there was no bar of limitation for pursuing claims of workman and accordingly, directed reinstatement. 2. The learned counsel appearing for the management contends that even a reference to the decision of the Hon'ble Supreme Court must be understood only as laying down of law that the Industrial Disputes Act itself does not stipulate any period of limitation and it shall be permissible for a Court to examine the reasons for the delay whenever they are offered. It is not as if the delay at all times is irrelevant. Pursuing stale claims is still an anathema and the Court shall not entertain the same at any point of time and grant the relief to the workman in undeserving cases. The learned counsel appearing for the workman is not able to give any reason for the extraordinary delay of approaching the Labour Court more than 12 years after he had left the service. It is most unnatural for a workman to keep quiet for such a long time when his services had been terminated which according to the workman, was wrongly done. His attempted justification made before the Court was that he had made several visits to the office of the Executive Engineer, PWD, but they were not all favourably considered. This appears too lame an excuse to be accepted. The workman has had the benefit of Section 17-B all along and that itself is sufficient recompense the alleged wrongful termination that he was complaining. The award of the Labour Court granting him the relief of reinstatement is unjustified. Civil Writ Petition No.124 of 2006 - 3 - The reference to the decision of the Hon'ble Supreme Court is again misapplied to a wrong circumstance when no attempt was made by the workman to explain the long delay. 3. The award of the Labour Court, under the circumstances, is set aside and the writ petition is allowed. No costs. (K.KANNAN) 20.10.2009 JUDGE sanjeev