Tamil Nadu   

Court directive to Tamil Nadu

J. Venkatesan

Supreme Court asks Tamil Nadu to issue notice through ads After the retrenchment in September 2002, over 70 workers had died and 10 of them had committed suicide due to poverty.

NEW DELHI: Finding that a majority of the 10,000 highway workers had not been served the court notice, the Supreme Court on Wednesday asked the Tamil Nadu Government to issue notice to them through advertisements in one Tamil and one English newspaper about its special leave petition challenging the Madras High Court order.

Coming to the rescue of the 10,000 sacked workers in the State, the apex court in May this year directed the Government to pay two months' wages to them in six weeks as an interim relief. Accordingly the State complied with the order and the matter was listed for further hearing on Wednesday before a Bench of Justice Arijit Pasayat and Justice C.K. Thakker.

When the matter was taken up it was found that the notice issued by the court earlier had not been served on most of the workers, who were cited as respondents in the SLP filed by the State, besides the trade unions. To ensure that all the 9,728 workers received the notice, the Bench asked the State to issue the notice through advertisement in Daily Thanthi and The Hindu in four weeks and adjourned the case till then.

A Government Order issued on September 5, 2002 terminated all 9,728 gang mazdoors, recruited in 1997 and 1998. The State Administrative Tribunal, upholding the abolition of the posts, however, ordered payment of six months' wages to compensate the loss caused to them.

A Division Bench of the High Court held that the Government Order was wholly illegal and invalid in law and set aside the termination orders. The Tamil Nadu Government filed a special leave petition against this judgment.

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