ORDER
1. This Letters Patent Appeal has been filed on an order in C.W.J.C. No. 6976 of 2001; Kapil Deo Yadav v. Bihar State Electricity Board and Ors. The order challenged is dated July 25, 2001.
2. The issue which has been presented on the writ petitions upon which the learned Judge was not inclined to agree is thus: The petitioner as a workman has been charged for certain misdemeanours during the course of service. In so far as the charge is concerned, it is not relevant in the present appeal nor it was relevant in the writ petition. The charge was that during a certain meeting of workers and staff the petitioner made objectionable utterances against the management. The Court will leave this aspect at this without reflecting
on the merits of the matter.
3. When the domestic enquiry was initiated and the petitioner was served with a charge on May 11, 2001, the petitioner was given an opportunity to present his defence. The petitioner indicated that he would like to be represented by one Chakradhar Prasad Singh, General Secretary of the Union at the Bihar State Electricity Board. In reference to this he was indicated by the management that he may make an alternate choice as according to the Standing Order No. 816 EB 12 DP-814/99 dated June 1, 1999, in effect, assistance from a retired Officer/Workman of the Board or an outsider may not be had as a defence assistance in a departmental proceeding.
4. The petitioner made an issue out of this, contending that a standing order of the nature which was indicated to the petitioner that he may not be represented by a person indicated by him is void and illegal as it does not have the sanctity under the Industrial Employment (Standing Orders) Act, 1946.
5. The plain question before the Court is that whether the rule of the game were changed while the game was on. It is acknowledged that the standing order of June 1, 1999 had been within the knowledge of the staff of the Bihar State Electricity Board since the date of its publication and this is not an issue. The contention is that perhaps this standing order may not hold and cannot be invoked as it is made for want of certification under the Act aforesaid.
6. Too much is being presumed on the applicability of the standing order. If the Union has a case that this particular standing order may not meet the test of the 1946 Act, then nothing restrained the Union from raising an issue before the appropriate Labour Court within the close proximity of the declaration of the amended standing order. But, such a stage
cannot be rendered that the standing order or for that matter the office order which is meant to apply to workers as a class is permitted to be objective to in its applicability at the High Court in writ proceeding.
7. The petitioner accepts that the standing order has always been there more than two years prior to the domestic or the departmental inquiry. This standing order had not been manufactured especially for the petitioner’s case. Thus, the issue should not be enlarged beyond what is the charge in the domestic enquiry. It is not that the petitioner is being denied an opportunity to take a defence nor is the petitioner being denied a fair opportunity to take anybody within the meaning of the standing order dated June 1, 1999. But, if the petitioner insists that he ought to have a person alien to the establishment, retired or an outsider, this aspect runs against grain of the standing order which was there for more than two years. The plea of the petitioner is unfair; an opportunity to defend is not being denied.
8. The Court is of the opinion that the learned Judge has committed no error in the order on the writ petition.