Case: Mysore State Road Transport Corporation Vs. Babajan Conductor &amp; Anr

The Mysore State Road Transport Corporation is the appellant by special leave before us. The first respondent, a conductor in the Mysore Govt. Road Transport Department, had petitioned in the High Court under Art. 226 against the appellant and the State of Mysore and asked it to quash an order of his dismissal, passed on 25-1-1961, in disciplinary proceedings taken against him at a time when he was a servant of the Mysore Govt. Road Transport Department. The Government Department was abolished on 1-8-1961. But before this event happened, the Mysore Government had sent notices to its employees on 23-6-61 proposing to transfer all those persons who were actually in its service on the date of issue of these notices and had accepted offers of appointment as employees of the Corporation. The first respondent, having been already dismissed for misconduct on 25-1-1961, was not the recipient of one of these notices to exercise an option.2. In his, writ petition, questioning the order of his dismissal, the first respondent had also asked for a declaration that he had continued in service since the date of his suspension and commencement of disciplinary proceedings. The High Court of Mysore merely quashed the dismissal order of 25-1-1961 and the order of suspension dated 23-7-60. It did not grant the declaratory relief asked for. It observed : "It is further ordered that this is without prejudice to the holding of fresh enquiry if they consider the same necessary".

Court's reasoning:
8. The State Government owed no duty to the first respondent to pay him after its transport department was wound up. No term of any contract was placed before the Court to show what duty the Government could have to employ the first respondent after its transport department was wound up or to direct the Corporation to do so. We do not know what option the State Government has given to the first respondent after the writ petition was filed. If it had already given any option to him, there was no point in directing it to give another option. In order to compel the Corporation to do anything, as already indicated, only a general direction under S.34 of the Act, set out above, could be given by the Government. There neither could be a specific direction with regard to a particular case nor was any specific direction given by the Government for any such case. The High Court could not take upon itself the power of fill any gap in the provisions of the Act, even if we were to assume that there was one here, and compel the Government to perform a function which the Government was not under any kind of obligation to do. The High Court could not give a specific direction to make provision to meet what it thought was required in a particular or individual case if such a case fell outside the provisions made by the Act and the rules. We can find no justification at all for such assumption of powers by the High Court.The case cited by Mrs. Pappu arose out of a claim under S. 33(c)(2) ofthe Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, but the views expressed there accord with ours. We respectfully adopt the same reasoning.11. Indeed, in the case now before us, the Corporations legal position rests on a stronger footing than it did in the case cited above inasmuch as the declaratory relief asked for by the first respondent against the Corporation had not been granted. That relief would, therefore, be deemed to have been refused. The first respondent did not himself go up in appeal against that decision. He cannot claim such a relief in the subsequent writ petition now before us.12. The fact set out above show that there were ample grounds for discriminating between a person against whom an order of dismissal had been passed, so that he was no longer serving in the transport department, and others who were not in the same position but were actually in the service of the transport department of the Government. It may be that the effect of the High Courts order, setting aside the dismissal, was that the stigma of dismissal was removed from the record of the first respondent. Nevertheless, as no order granting a declaratory relief he had asked for was given to the first respondent, he could not be deemed to be a servant even of the State Government after the department in which he was working was wound up. The most he could says was that he was not dismissed. The winding up of the department would, on the facts stated above, operate as the discharge of the respondent who could, if so advised, seek whatever other means of redress he may still have under the law.