JUDGMENT
R.J. Kochar, J.
1. The petitioner employer is aggrieved by the judgment and order passed by the Industrial Court, Pune on 5-9-1995 in Revision Application U.L.P. No. 78 of 1989 rejecting its revision application along with the revision application filed by the respondent employee against the judgment and order dated 12-10-1989 passed by the learned Labour Court, Pune in Complaint (U.L.P.) No. 19 of 1984 filed by the respondent employee against the petitioners under section 28 read with section 30 and Item 1(a), (b), (d), (f) and (g) of Schedule IV of the Maharashtra Recognition of Trade Union and Prevention of Unfair Labour Practices Act, 1971 (for short M.R.T.U. & P.U.L.P. Act). The respondent employee in the said complaint had prayed for a declaration that the order of termination passed by the petitioner amounted to an unfair labour practice and that she should be given the relief of reinstatement with full backwages and continuity of service.
2. It appears from the synopsis given by the petitioner company that the respondent employee was employed as a Senior Mechanical Draughtsman from 26-8-1980. It appears that by a memo dated 20-8-1983 she was conveyed that she was unable to record her work properly; that time taken for drawing work was much more than estimated; that marketing and inking work was poor and that sometimes she committed fundamental mistakes in the drawings. According to the petitioners, the said defects and draw backside in her work seriously hampered the working of the organisation. She was called upon to submit her explanation. It appears that in order to give an opportunity of explanation a formal enquiry was held by the petitioners wherein the Enquiry Officer heard both the sides and considered the documentary evidence and material and found that the respondent employee was guilty of the charges levelled against her. By an order dated 21-1-1984 the respondent employee was discharged from service w.e.f. 23-1-1984 by making a payment to her for one month’s salary as notice pay. The order of discharge as a result of a lenient view taken by the management considering the length of service she had put in with the organisation. The respondent was aggrieved by the said order of termination and filed a complaint of unfair labour practice as stated hereinabove. The petitioners contested the said complaint and justified its action of termination, inter alia, on the grounds that the respondent was given sufficient opportunity to explain and to defend in the domestic enquiry and that there was sufficient evidence and material before the Enquiry Officer to find her guilt and lapses committed by her during a very short span of period of service. According to the petitioners, they had held a fair and proper enquiry before taking the action of discharge of the respondent employee. The petitioners contended that there was no unfair labour practice engaged in by the petitioners in the discharge order passed against the respondent employee.
3. The Labour Court proceeded simultaneously to consider the issue of fairness and propriety of the enquiry and also to find out whether the respondent employee was guilty of the acts of misconducts levelled against her. It appears that the petitioners adduced evidence on merit before the Labour Court in addition to the material on record in the domestic enquiry. The Labour Court finally concluded by the impugned order that the order of discharge amounted to an unfair labour practice as alleged and directed the petitioners to reinstate her with half backwages but with continuity of service. Both the parties were aggrieved by the said order and therefore, they filed revision applications under section 4 of the M.R.T.U. & P.U.L.P. Act. The learned Member of the Industrial Court dismissed both the revision applications and confirmed the order of the Labour Court.
4. The petitioner employer was aggrieved by the said order of the Industrial Court, Pune and therefore, it has filed the present petition under Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution of India.
5. I have closely perused the entire material on record before the Labour Court. According to me the Labour Court had exceeded its jurisdiction in wholly appreciating and reassessing the entire evidence and material before the Enquiry Officer. It also appears from the judgment of the Labour Court that it had tried the complaint as if a criminal or session trial was being conducted. The Labour Court has undertaken the exercise of minutely and elaborately analyzing the entire material which was not the function of the Labour Court under sections 28 and 30 of the M.R.T.U. & P.U.L.P. Act. The jurisdiction of the Labour Court under the Act is certainly not of an Appeal Court to sit in appeal over the decision of the employer. The Labour Court ought to have limited or restricted its inquiry into the manner in which the inquiry was held and whether there was material on record to support the conclusions of the Enquiry Officer and to justify the action of the punishment. In the present case the petitioner has produced sufficient material before the Enquiry Officer and also before the Labour Court in the form of a statement which is at Exhibit 8 page 92 of the paper book in what manner the respondent employee was working and how she was utterly inefficient and incompetent in her work as a Senior Draughtsman. It was entirely for the employer to have assessed the working of the respondent employee, as it was certainly a case of subjective satisfaction on the basis of objective material. The respondent employee was sounded by a memo that her work was not satisfactory. An enquiry was held wherein sufficient material and evidence was produced against the respondent employee. A detailed statement of deficiencies committed by her were given before the Labour Court. It appears that the Labour Court went on examining like a criminal trial itemwise deficiencies or defects placed on record by the petitioners. In my opinion the Labour Court had far exceeded its jurisdiction by minutely probing to deep in the matter which a Labour Court under this Act or under any other Act is not expected to do. The jurisdiction of the Labour Court as held in the case of Vithoba Maruti Chavan v. Taki Bilgrami & another, is neither as wide as a Court of appeal nor is as narrow as a revisional Court. The Labour Court is expected to find out that a fair and proper opportunity of hearing is given to the delinquent employee and that punishment is commensurate with the proved act of misconduct and that there is no victimization and that the punishment is not shockingly disproportionate, as a matter of even legal victimization. The Labour Court has to examine whether the employer has acted as a reasonable man in the given circumstances. The parameters of the jurisdiction of the Labour Court or the Industrial Tribunal under the labour enactments are by now very well established and the parameters are distinctly laid down by the Supreme Court in a catena of judgments which I need not recite. In my opinion the Labour Court committed a serious and grave error of law in interfering the order of discharge passed against the respondent employee which followed a fair and proper enquiry in bona fide exercise of the employers powers. There was no allegation of mala fides. According to me, it was an error of law apparent on the face of record warranting correction in the revisional jurisdiction of the Industrial Court under section 44 of the Act. Even the Industrial Court in my opinion failed to exercise its jurisdiction under section 44 by not interfering with the said order of the Labour Court. Even the Industrial Court has undertaken an unwarranted exercise of further probing deep in the matter by analysing the whole of the material before the Labour Court and the Enquiry Officer as if it was sitting as the Court of original jurisdiction trying a civil suit or trying a session trial. In my opinion even the Industrial Court has committed grave error of law by expanding the limits of its jurisdiction under section 44 of the Act too wide to be permitted. Instead of finding of the error of law on the face of record of the Labour Court the Industrial Court itself tried to unearth and excavate the entire material to establish how the petitioner employer was utterly wrong in its disciplinary action against the respondent employee. In my opinion the Labour Court has exceeded his powers and jurisdiction while the Industrial Court has failed to exercise its power of Superintendence. Both the courts have committed serious and grave errors of law warranting interference by this Court under Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution of India.
6. Shri Bhange has relied on the following judgments of this Court:
1. 1989(I) C.L.R. 558 Prafull Dattatraya Pore v. J.K. Chemicals Ltd. & others.
2. 1989(I) C.L.R. 432 The Cosmos India Rubber Pvt. Ltd. v. Mumbai Mazdoor Sabha & others
3. The Division Bench in the case of Cosmos India Rubber (supra) once again repeated the jurisdictional boundaries of the Labour Court under section 28 of the Act in the following paragraph:
“7. The expression “unfair labour practices” according to section 3(16) of the Act means unfair labour practices as defined in section 26 of the Act. Section 26 lays down that unless the context requires otherwise, unfair labour practices mean any of the practices listed in Schedules II, III, and IV. Schedule IV sets on general unfair labour practices on the part of employers. Undoubtedly in conducting an inquiry in respect of a complaint made under section 28(1) of the Act against an employer, the Labour Court is required to consider all or any of the practices set out in Schedule IV had in fact been committed by an employer. In other words, the scope of an inquiry under section 28 against an employer would be confined to matters set out in Schedule IV and such inquiry proceedings would not be in the nature of an appeal in the sense an Appeal Court functions as a Court of error providing for a rehearing of the entire matter. We have carefully perused the decision of Mr. Justice Jahagirdar in Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation v. Niranjan Sridhar Gade & another (supra). The learned Single Judge has not laid down any proposition contrary to the view taken by us about the scope and effect of section 28 read with Schedule IV of the Act. Before the learned Single Judge, the employer Transport Corporation had filed a petition under Article 227 against an order passed by the Presiding Officer, Labour Court in Nasik holding that the termination of the service of a driver of the Transport Corporation amounted to unfair labour practices within the meaning of Clauses (b), (d), (f) and (g) of Item 1 of Schedule IV of the Act (1 of 1972). The writ petition before Jahagirdar, J., succeeded. In the facts of the said reported case, the learned Judge held that the Labour Court was not right in finding that by denying copies of the deposition of witnesses examined in the preliminary inquiry the rule of natural justice had been violated. The learned Single Judge held that in the said case except two none of the other persons whose statements were recorded in the preliminary inquiry had been examined in the domestic inquiry. So according to the learned Single Judge it is wholly unnecessary to supply copies of their statements recorded in the preliminary inquiry. The learned Single Judge also noted that the rule of natural justice would have been vitiated only if in the domestic inquiry the Enquiry Officer had relied upon materials which had not been put to the delinquent workman. In the inquiry impugned in the writ petition disposed by Jahagirdar, J., the Labour Court had purported to review the evidence regarding the charge against the delinquent workman that the conductor of the bus had handed over moneys collected from the passengers to him. In view of this position, the learned Single Judge had observed that it was not open to a Labour Court which was not sitting as a Court of Appeal to sit upon the judgment over the findings recorded by the Enquiry Officer in a domestic inquiry unless those findings were perverse. The Labour Court in the said case had exceeded its jurisdiction in reversing the findings recorded by the domestic inquiry in this regard. In view of this, Jahagirdar, J., had set aside the order of the Labour Court, Nasik, in the complaint case in question.”
7. In the present case not only the Labour Court but even the Industrial Court as a Court of supervision sat over the matter as a Court of Appeal considering a criminal or session trial. Both the impugned judgments and orders therefore deserve to be quashed and set aside.
8. While granting rule in the petition this Court (Patankar, J.) on 23-1-1996 passed a conditional interim order directing the petitioners to deposit an amount of Rs. 1,50,000/- and allowing the respondent employee to withdraw the same unconditionally. The petitioner company was further directed to pay every month Rs. 1200/- to the respondent employee from 1-1-1996. It is not disputed that the amount of Rs. 1,50,000/- was equal to the full backwages of the employee and she has withdrawn the said amount unconditionally. She has received Rs. 1200/- p.m. from 1-1-1996 till date. Shri Bhange, the learned Advocate for the petitioner has stated that the respondent employee has reached the stipulated age of retirement of 55 years in accordance with the appointment order on 14-12-1999. Still however, the petitioners have paid her Rs. 1200/- per month till the date. Shri Bhange submits that the respondent employee has received Rs. 2,16,000/-. Shri Damle, the learned Advocate for the respondent submitted that under the modern standing orders the retirement age would be 58 years and that she was entitled to be continued in employment till that age. Shri Bhange very fairly stated that his clients would pay Rs. 1200/- p.m. till the month of December, 2002 so that even that dispute will be put to an end. Shri Bhange has further very fairly stated that even though his clients have succeeded they will not claim recovery of the amounts already received by the respondent employee. It is not disputed that the respondent employee has so far received the total amount of Rs. 2,16,000/- and she would further receive an amount of Rs. 6,000/- at the rate of Rs. 1200/- p.m. for five months towards the wages for the remaining period of the age of respondent employee i.e. 58 years. Shri Bhange assures this Court that the amount of Rs. 6,000/- will be paid to the respondent employee as early as possible without any delay. I place on record my appreciation for the efforts taken by Shri Bhange for persuading his clients to adopt the aforesaid liberal approach at the intervention of the Court.
9. The petition succeeds. Rule is made absolute with no order as to costs.