The Hindu : SC moved against dismissal of T.N. Govt. employees

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jul 16, 2003

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SC moved against dismissal of T.N. Govt. employees

By J. Venkatesan

NEW DELHI July 15. The Tamil Nadu State Transport Employees Federation today moved the Supreme Court challenging a judgment of the Madras High Court refusing to entertain petitions against the mass dismissal of Government employees.

The special leave petition (SLP) seeking to set aside the July 11 judgment, filed through advocate, S.R. Setia is to be "mentioned" before the Chief Justice tomorrow for immediate hearing.

The Federation by its vice-president, T.K. Rangarajan, in its SLP said the case arose out of an extraordinary situation of dismissals of Government servants in lakhs by invoking an ordinance passed with retrospective effect.

By virtue of the ordinance, a new section was introduced in the Tamil Nadu Essential Services Maintenance Act (TNESMA), 2002, according to which those who absented from duty were deemed to have participated in the strike and admitted his/her "misconduct" knowingly warranting the punishment of dismissal from service without conducting any enquiry.

Invoking this ordinance about 1.70 lakh employees were dismissed from service after preventing them from joining duty. The Government has resorted to fresh recruitment in their place.

The High Court which went into the issue rejected the petitions and directed the employees to approach the State Administrative Tribunal. Hence the SLP.

The petitioner said the SLP raised important questions of law, viz. can the State Government promulgate ordinance No. 3 of 2003 on July 7 with retrospective effect from April 23, a day when the State Assembly was in session.

Whether the State was competent to issue the ordinance without obtaining "prior instructions'' from the President under Article 213 (1) of the Constitution.

When the State Government had unleashed terror on its employees by effecting mass arrests and dismissals by throwing to the winds the Constitutional mandates of democracy, fair play and justice, was the High Court right in not answering the Constitutional issues, he asked.

The petitioner sought a direction to quash the impugned judgment; an interim stay of further operation of the TNESMA and the ordinance; to restrain the Government from preventing the employees from reporting back to duty; restrain the Government from filling the posts of dismissed employees and to restrain the Government from evicting employees from their quarters.

Another writ petition by a Chennai lawyer, L.S.M. Hasan Fizal, assailed the ordinance on the ground that it was violative of the fundamental rights of Government servants.

It described the ordinance as a "classic case of legislative despotism''.

Explaining his locus standi to file a public interest petition, the petitioner cited the apex court judgment in the S.P. Gupta case, wherein it had been stated that when a legal wrong or injury was caused to a class of persons, who were unable to approach the court for relief, any member of the public could do so.

In this case, the lawyer said the dismissed Government servants feared that they would be victimised if they approached the Supreme Court and hence he was filing the petition.

He said because of the ordinance, facilitating mass dismissals the administration had been paralysed and there was utter chaos.

He prayed for a declaration that the TNESMA amendment ordinance and all other consequential orders of dismissal were arbitrary, illegal and violative of Articles 14, 16 and 311 of the Constitution and consequently to direct the Government to reinstate all the dismissed employees.

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