JUDGMENT

Per Gajendragadkar, J.:-An award directing the appellant, the Bareilly Electricity Supply Company, Ltd,, to reinstate its employee, the respondent Sirajuddin, has given rise to this appeal by special leave. The respondent had been employed by the appellant in December 1951 as an unskilled labourer, viz., cooly. He was first working in the mains department as a cooly and then in September 1952 he was transferred to the meter department in the same capacity and in the same scale of wages. While he was working in the said department he was required to keep a cycle of his own for the company s. work for which he was allowed an allowance of Rs. 6 per month. Later, on 21 December 1956 by a verbal order he was retransferred to the mains department and naturally the cycle allowance paid to him whilst he was working in the meter department was discontinued. The respondent challenged the validity of this order of retransfer and that became the subject-matter of an industrial dispute which was referred for adjudication to the industrial tribunal. It is in the said reference that the award under appeal was passed by the tribunal.

The point raised by the appellant before us lies within a