The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : State allowed to reinstate road workers

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Mar 10, 2006

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

State allowed to reinstate road workers

Legal Correspondent

SC allows Tamil Nadu to withdraw appeal

New Delhi: The Supreme Court has permitted the Tamil Nadu Government to reinstate 9,728 sacked gang mazdoors and pay them three months wages as ex gratia.

A Bench of Justice Arijit Pasayat and Justice Tarun Chatterjee disposed of an appeal filed by the Tamil Nadu Government against a Madras High Court judgment directing their reinstatement. The Bench took on record a Government Order issued on February 10 and said the payment should be made in terms of the G.O. within three months.

Posts abolished

The workers, who were appointed during 1997 and 1998, were terminated in September 2002 after the posts were abolished. The State Administrative Tribunal, while upholding the abolition of the posts, ordered payment of six months wages to compensate the workers' loss.

Disposing of a batch of petitions against the Tribunal's order, a Division Bench of the High Court held that the Government Order was illegal and invalid in law and set aside the termination orders. The Tamil Nadu Government appealed against this judgment.

In the present application seeking withdrawal of the appeal, the State annexed the G.O. stating that the sacked workers would be reinstated. The G.O. said the Government considered the condition of the gang mazdoors sympathetically. Now that the financial position had improved and more funds had been allocated to the Highways Department, the Government decided to reinstate the workers with immediate effect.

It said the reinstated gang mazdoors would be entitled for the basic pay they were drawing at the time of the ouster, in the same scale of pay, with effect from the present date of joining duty. Even though they did not do any work consequent to their ouster, it would not cause any break in service. The period of service they had put in together with their future service would be taken into account while calculating the service period.

The G.O. said the High Court had ordered payment of six months salary to the ousted workers. Since three months salary had already been paid, the remaining three months wages would be paid to them as ex gratia. Further, the February salary would also be paid. The Government had sanctioned Rs. 16.81 crore for this purpose, it said.

The apex court disposed of the appeal in the light of the G.O.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail