JUDGMENT

ORDER — Civil Appeal No. 2574/1972 preferred by the appellant Mahendra Singh Dhantwal was disposed of by this Court on May 7, 1976. The decision of this Court is reported in Mahendra Singh Dhantwal v. Hindustan Motors Ltd., (1976) Supp SCR 635.

2. The operative portion of the judgment reads as under :

"We, therefore, feel that, in the interest of industrial peace and above all to draw a final curtain to this unhappy litigation, we would be justified in quantifying the compensation payable to the workman in this case to a sum of Rs. 20,000/- only in lieu of reinstatement with full back wages as ordered by the Tribunal, which we accordingly order".

3. The respondent was accordingly required to pay Rs. 20,000/- only in lieu of his reinstatement. In order to fully grasp the meaning of the operative portion of the judgment, it may be recalled that in an earlier round of litigation between the parties, the Industrial Tribunal made an award directing reinstatement of the workman (present appellant) with 50% of his backwages for the period of his forced, unemployment as compensation. After this award the respondent-company paid, lip sympathy by reinstating the appellant but again terminated his service, by paying three months salary in lieu of notice oil the assumption that it was open to the respondent to terminate the appellants service with three months notice. This assumption was founded on the alleged contract of service between the parties that the appellant was employed for a period of eight years. If the law is, as it stands now on this point, as declared in Santosh Gupta v. State Bank of Patiala, (1980) 3 SCR 884 this would have again been impermissible retrenchment but that aspect is no more open to us. In the second round of litigation, the Tribunal held that the respondent-company under the guise of invoking a contractual term had in fact dismissed the appellant on the ground of misconduct as alleged by the respondent. The Tribunal directed again reinstatement with full back-wages for the period of his forced unemployment as compensation. The respondent challenged the correctness of this award by a writ petition in the Calcutta High Court. The learned single Judge before whom the writ petition came up for hearing rejected the same observing that the view taken by the Tribunal cannot be characterised as unreasonable. Undaunted by these repeated rebuffs, the respondent carried the matter, in appeal before the Division Bench of the Calcutta High Court. The Division Bench reached an unsustainable conclusion that unless the workman is discharged for misconduct, an application under Section 33-A is not required to be made and the Tribunal bad no jurisdiction to set aside the order of termination in an application under Section 33-A. By a certificate granted by the High Court under Article 133 (1) (c) of the Constitution, the appellant preferred the aforementioned appeal to this Court.

4. This Court disposed of the appeal in terms as hereinabove extracted.

5. The operative order of the judgment of this Court clearly spells out the responsibility of the respondent to pay Rupees 20.000/- without any deduction therefrom to the appellant. The respondent while implementing the judgment of this Court deducted Rs. 2,145/- from the amount of Rupees 20,000/- directed to be paid to the appellant on the ground that as the amount was being paid as back wages, the employer was under an obligation to deduct the income-tax payable at source. This deduction in our opinion, is impermissible and ought not to have been made for two reasons : (i) that the company completely overlooked sub-section (10-B) of Section 10 of the Income-tax Act, 1961 which was inserted by the Finance Act of 1975 with effect from 1-4-1976 and the payment was made to the appellant after sub-section (10-B) was brought on the statute book. Sub-section (10-B) provides that in computing the total income, of a previous year of any person, any income received by way of compe