BANGALORE: The Kudremukh Shram Shakti Sangathan (KSSS) has filed a petition in the Supreme Court urging it to review its judgment of October 30, 2002 ordering the closure of Kudremukh Iron Ore Company Limited (KIOCL).

The KSSS said it has filed the review petition as closure of the unit will affect 2,500 workers. It said the workers were not parties to the Interlocutary Application (IA 670/2001) and they have been denied an opportunity of present their case. It said no steps have been taken as required under the rules to make it a representative petition and call upon persons interested in supporting or opposing the petition to appear before the court.

A Bench comprising then Chief Justice of India (CJI) B.N. Kirpal, Justice Y.K. Sabharwal (now CJI) and Justice Arijit Pasayat had referred the matter to a Central Empowered Committee (CEC), which recommended the mine's closure.

It said Mahendra Vyas, advocate, who had drawn up the IA, was a member of the CEC and this violated the principle that "no one shall be a judge of his own cause."

It said closure of the unit will lead to an annual loss of Rs. 3,000 crores to the nation. Assets worth Rs. 4,000, including the pipeline laid between Kudremukh and Mangalore Port, will go waste, the KSSS said.

The review petition said that though an application was filed in August 2001 on behalf of the workers, seeking an opportunity to be heard, it was dismissed on September 7, 2001. This vitiated the October 30, 2002 order in view of the judgment of the Constitution Bench of 1983 in the National Textiles Workers' Union versus P.R. Ramakrishna case. In this case, the court held that if an industry is to be closed by an order of the court and workers are denied an opportunity to present their arguments, the order is liable to be set aside.

It said the report of the monitoring committee of May 11, 2005 supported the KIOCL prayer for continuation of mining operations.

Court's views

The KSSS said it is relying on the views of the Supreme Court in the Roopa Ashok Hurra versus Ashok Hurra case, in which it said: "Judges of the highest court do their best, subject of course to the limitation of human fallibility, yet situations may arise, in the rarest of rare cases, which would require reconsideration of a final judgment to set right miscarriage of justice complained of. In such cases it would not only be proper but also obligatory both legally and morally to rectify the error.'' Though it is essentially in public interest that a final judgment of the final court in the country should not be open to challenge, "yet there may be circumstances, wherein declining to reconsider the judgment would be oppressive to judicial conscience and would cause perpetuation of irremediable justice."

The sangha said the principle should be applied to the facts and circumstances of the case as "it is among rarest-of-rare cases".

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