Their Workmen (Executive Staff Union), FCI vs Employer, Food Corporation of India & Anr.
Background
In 1997, an Industrial Tribunal held that the Food Corporation of India (FCI) had unlawfully retrenched 21 casual workmen and ordered their reinstatement, regularization in Class-IV posts, and partial back wages. FCI challenged this award in the High Court but, while its writ petition was pending, voluntarily reinstated the workmen and even went further, "absorbing" them into regular service via its own office orders: an action taken under only a conditional interim stay that merely required paying last-drawn wages. Eighteen years later, after the workmen had served in regular positions all that time, a Division Bench of the Jharkhand High Court modified the earlier order and struck down the regularization portion of the award, reasoning that the industrial dispute reference itself did not include a term of "regularization."
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court held that FCI could not be permitted to "approbate and reprobate": that is, it could not voluntarily and unilaterally absorb the workmen into permanent service (far beyond what the interim court order required), let them serve in that capacity and gain seniority for 18 years, and then turn around and challenge the same benefit it had freely granted. Since FCI had never sought urgent disposal of its own writ petition during those 18 years and had accepted the practical benefits of its choice, allowing it to reverse course at this late stage would cause serious and unjustified hardship to the workmen. The Court restored the original 1997 Tribunal award in full, including regularization and back wages, and dismissed FCI's cross-appeal.
Lesson Learnt
A party cannot accept the benefits of its own voluntary compliance with an order for years and then challenge that very compliance later. The law does not allow one to "have it both ways," a principle known as the doctrine of approbate and reprobate.