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Vice-Chancellor, Lucknow University v. Akhilesh Kumar Khare & Anr.

Civil Appeal · Neutral citation not assigned (Civil Appeal No. 5731 of 2011)Decided 8 Sept 2015
Civil Appeal No. 5731 of 2011
Justice Dipak Misra · Justice R. Banumathi

Background

In 1989, Lucknow University's Finance Officer had engaged the respondents as daily-wage Routine Grade Clerks/Peons, paid out of a contingency fund, even though the Vice-Chancellor had directed that such daily-wage engagements must stop after 31 December 1990 without prior written approval. The engagements continued without that approval and were eventually ended; the workers raised an industrial dispute, and the Industrial Tribunal (upheld by the Allahabad High Court, Lucknow Bench) directed the University to consider them for regularisation when vacancies arose and to pay them wages on par with similarly placed workmen in the meantime. The University appealed this batch of connected matters to the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that although the termination of the daily-wage workers violated Section 25F of the Industrial Disputes Act (the mandatory retrenchment-compensation procedure), the modern legal position, following a line of its own precedents, is that reinstatement with back wages is not an automatic remedy for such a violation, especially where the workers were daily wagers rather than regular employees and where decades had passed. Since the respondents had been out of employment for over 20 years and were now too old to be regularly appointed, the Court modified the High Court's order and instead directed the University to pay each respondent a lump-sum compensation of Rs. 4 lakh (in addition to amounts already due under Section 17B of the Industrial Disputes Act), disposing of all appeals as partly allowed.

Lesson Learnt

A worker illegally terminated without following retrenchment procedure does not automatically get their job back: courts increasingly prefer practical monetary compensation over reinstatement, particularly for daily-wage employees and where very long delays have made reinstatement impractical.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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