The Madras High Court Bench here has ruled that two dismissed gang mazdoors (road workers) who obtained a reinstatement order from Tamil Nadu Administrative Tribunal (since abolished) in 2002 but got reinstated in service by Highways Department only in 2013 cannot claim back wages for the interregnum period.
Disposing of two writ appeals filed by the Principal Director of the Highways Department, a Division Bench of Justices V. Dhanapalan and Justice V.M. Velumani said: “The contention of the learned counsel for the respondents (road workers) that the respondents are entitled to wages from the date of order of the tribunal is untenable and unsustainable in law.”
The judges said the road workers, G. Gurusamy and S. Kaliappan, were appointed in the Highways and Rural Works Department in Dindigul district on November 17, 1997. A year later, the District Educational Officer informed the Highways Department that the duo had produced bogus certificates to prove that they had studied up to class V.
Hence, a departmental enquiry was initiated against them and they were dismissed from service in 2001. However, disposing of individual applications moved by them, the administrative tribunal set aside the dismissal orders on March 27, 2002 and directed the Highways Department to reinstate them in service with imposition of a punishment of stoppage of increment for five years.
The department neither complied with the order nor challenged it in the High Court. Hence, the road workers filed a writ petition in 2010 seeking a direction to reinstate them. That writ petition was disposed of with a direction to consider the workers’ representations. Yet nothing fruitful transpired forcing the workers to move a contempt of court application.
The contempt application was closed in 2011 after recording the submission of an Executive Engineer in Dindigul that a proposal to reinstate the workers had been forwarded to the Principal Director. But the department did not reinstate them and they filed a second writ petition in 2012 seeking a direction to the department.
Disposing of the second writ petition on April 4, 2013, a single judge observed: “The respondent authorities are insensitive to the various orders passed by this Court. The first respondent is directed to reinstate the petitioners within a period of two weeks.”
Complying with the order, the Highways Department reinstated the workers on April 12, 2013 without any back wages and imposed a punishment of stoppage of increment for five years. Immediately, the workers filed another contempt of court application following which the department passed an order on September 11, 2013 cancelling the punishment of stoppage of increment.
The action was followed by the filing of the present writ appeal challenging the April 4, 2013 order.
