The Superintending Engineer, TWAD Board & Anr. v. M. Natesan & Ors.
Background
Between 1986-89, the respondents were engaged as daily-wage Store Watchmen on a purely temporary basis under the TWAD Board; their engagement orders expressly stated they could claim no further right of appointment. When the sectional stores were reorganized in 1990, their services were terminated for want of vacancies. The Labour Court, and subsequently the Madras High Court (Single Judge and Division Bench), held the terminations invalid and ordered reinstatement with 50% back wages, prompting the Board's appeal to the Supreme Court.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court held that the lower courts had wrongly placed the burden on the Board to prove the workmen had NOT worked 240 continuous days in a year: that initial burden lay on the workmen themselves, and neither side had actually discharged it. However, since most of the respondents had already reached superannuation age (or, in one case, died) by the time of the appeal, reinstatement was no longer practically relevant. The Court therefore converted the dispute into a monetary one, directing that the amounts already paid (including Rs. 2 lakhs per worker it had earlier ordered as an interim condition for stay) be treated as full and final settlement of all back-wage and reinstatement claims, with any deposited court amounts refunded to the Board. The Court expressly noted that this order was passed on the peculiar facts of the case and was not to be treated as a precedent.
Lesson Learnt
In long-pending service disputes, courts increasingly favour practical monetary closure over formal reinstatement once workers have aged out of employable service, and in such disputes, the burden of proving continuous "240 days" employment (a key threshold under labour law) rests initially on the workman, not the employer.