K.V. Srinivasan, 85, a former Food Corporation of India (FCI) employee, has been running from pillar to post for nearly four decades seeking payment of arrears that have been pending since 1979, when he was dismissed from service, where he held the post of assistant manager.
In October 2017, after a long legal battle that spanned more than 30 years, he won an order in his favour at the Central Government Industrial Tribunal.
The tribunal held that his dismissal was wrong, and ordered the FCI to pay half his salary for the whole period along with all other consequential benefits.
Short-lived relief
Mr. Srinivasan’s relief, however, was very short lived. Just when he thought his ordeal with the bureaucracy had ended, the FCI challenged the Industrial Tribunal award in the Karnataka High Court, putting him back to square one.
“I have fought for justice to be done for 39 years during which I have spent over ₹10 lakh. Just when I thought I had won, I’m told that have to start the fight again,” he told The Hindu as he broke down.
The ordeal of Mr. Srinivasan sounds similar to that of Tabara in Tabarana Kathe , a popular story by Kannada writer Poornachandra Tejaswi. The plot follows the protagonist’s Kafka-esque ordeal of Tabara, a retired government employee who is fighting to get his pension. He receives his pension only after he loses his wife to diabetes as he could not afford to pay for the treatment. The story was made into national award winning film by Girish Kasaravalli in 1987.
His transfer to Tuticorin
For Mr. Srinivasan, it all started when he was dismissed from service at FCI where he worked as an assistant manager in 1989 for refusing to take a transfer to Tuticorin, Tamil Nadu, from Bengaluru in 1987. He did report to Tuticorin for a day, but was called back to Bengaluru due to an ongoing CBI probe. He claimed he was promised a transfer back to Bengaluru which never came through and refused to return to Tuticorin for which he was dismissed. The dismissal was converted to compulsory retirement in 1993 after the intervention of Supreme Court. But his fight for arrears continued until the 2017 tribunal ruling, which again stands challenged.
Technical issue
A. Rajgopal, General Manager, Food Corporation of India, Karnataka, said that they were forced to challenge the tribunal award on a technical ground.
“Our contention has always been that the Industrial Tribunal has jurisdiction over only workmen and not officers. K.V. Srinivasan was an assistant manager when he was dismissed from service, in a rank of an officer. If we accept the order of the tribunal, it will be accepting its jurisdiction over officers which will affect us adversely in other cases as well,” he said.
However, Mr. Srinivasan contends that the FCI’s reason to go on appeal is only an excuse as several court orders had laid down that an assistant manager, equivalent to the rank of a supervisor is a workman. “Moreover, the FCI did not make this objection before the tribunal, he said.
