The Hindu : SC decision today on date of hearing in T.N. employees case

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jul 17, 2003

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SC decision today on date of hearing in T.N. employees case

By J. Venkatesan

NEW DELHI July 16. The Supreme Court will decide tomorrow on fixing a date for hearing petitions challenging a judgment of the Madras High Court refusing to entertain petitions against the dismissal of about 1.70 lakh Tamil Nadu Government employees.

A Bench comprising the Chief Justice V.N. Khare, Justice S.B. Sinha and Justice G.P. Mathur asked Nalini Chidambaram, counsel for the Tamil Nadu State Transport Employees Federation and a Chennai lawyer, who had filed a writ petition, to make a `mention' tomorrow for fixing a date for hearing the matter.

Ms. Chidambaram told the Bench that the petition could not be included in today's `mentioning' list as there was some delay in numbering it. She requested that the matter be posted for hearing on July 21. However, the Chief Justice asked her to `mention' it tomorrow.

The special leave petition (SLP) by the Vice-President of the Federation, T.K. Rangarajan, which sought to set aside the July 11 judgment said that the case arose out of an extraordinary situation of mass dismissals of Government servants by invoking an ordinance amending the Tamil Nadu Essential Services Maintenance Act, passed with retrospective effect.

Meanwhile, the DMK MP and one of the petitioners before the High Court, C. Kuppusami, has moved the apex court challenging the High Court judgment.

He contended that the High Court was wrong in asking him to approach the State Administrative Tribunal. It failed to see that a public interest petition could be adjudicated only by the High Court and not by the Tribunal.

The High Court ought to have seen that the Tribunal was not competent to entertain and dispose of a litigation/dispute relating to the constitutional validity of an ordinance or Act and instituted by employees governed by the Industrial Disputes Act and employees of aided schools. Further, the court failed to see that the Tribunal with only the Vice-Chairman could not adjudicate the validity of the ordinance.

He said admittedly more than 1.69 lakh employees were dismissed from service invoking the provisions of the ordinance and that apart four lakh employees were not allowed to join duty. He said public interest, comparative hardship and balance of convenience were in favour of a stay of the operation of the impugned ordinance which was draconian in nature and made a plea to set aside the High Court judgment dated July 11.

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