The burden of proof lies on the employee to establish employment and continuity of service, and the consideration of industrial disputes can be impacted by the staleness of the claims.

1. Rule. Rule made returnable forthwith and heard finally by the consent of the parties.

2. The Petitioners in these three petitions are identically situated. All three of them were appointed as “Cleaners” on daily-wages at the rate of Rs.3/per bus. All three of them claimed to have worked for a short duration of about two to three years. The Respondent is common in all these petitions. The issue that needs to be determined by this Court is common in all these petitions. I have, therefore, taken up these three petitions together for hearing and passing orders.

3. The Petitioner, in the first petition, claims to have worked from November, 1988 to 31.12.1990. He was orally terminated on 31.12.1990.

4. In the second petition, the Petitioner claims to have worked from January, 1991 and was orally terminated from 31.12.1992.

5. In the third petition, the Petitioner claims to be working from January, 1988 and was orally terminated on 31.12.1990.

6. All these three Petitioners issued demand notices under Section 2A of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 on 31.05.2010 claiming reinstatement with continuity and full back-wages. Since the conciliation failed, the appropriate Government passed the order of reference on 17.03.2011, by which the matters were referred to the Labour Court for adjudication. The Labour Court registered these three reference cases as Reference (IDA) Nos.07/2011, 09/2011 and 08/2011, respectively.

7. The Petitioners submitted their statements of claims before the Labour Court. The Respondent/ MSRTC filed it's written statement and finally by the judgment and award dated 28.03.2013, all these three reference cases were answered in Negative on the ground that the matters suffer from delay and a stale dispute has been raised after passage of almost 20 years in the first and third case and 18 years in the second case. While holding that the references are being rejected primarily on the ground that stale disputes having been raised, the Labour Court has also considered the oral and documentary evidence before it and concluded that none of the Petitioners have succeeded in establishing completion of 240 days in the continuous and uninterrupted service of the Respondent/ MSRTC.

8. Shri Deshmukh, learned Advocate for the Petitioners, submits that the Labour Court could not have rejected the references only on the ground that the dispute raised is a stale dispute. It should have gone into oral and documentary evidence available before it. It should have considered that the Respondent/ Corporation had not produced the record which was demanded by the Petitioners and therefore, an adverse inference should have been drawn in these circumstances.

9. He further submits that the Petitioners had filed their affidavits in lieu of examination in chief. Some documents that they had in their custody were produced. The Petitioners, however, had admitted that they have no appointment order or such documentary evidence so as to prove that they were in continuous employment of the Respondent.

10. He submits that the work performed by the Petitioners was of washing the buses and they used to be paid on the basis of the numbers of buses washed. They were never required to sign any muster roll or register for marking their attendance. They used to keep an account of number of buses washed and accordingly, they used to be paid their remuneration.

11. Shri Deshmukh, however, submits that these reference cases could be referred back to the Labour Court for a fresh consideration and also with a direction to the Respondent/ MSRTC to produce the documents which the Petitioners had sought production of so as to enable the Petitioners to establish their continuous employment with the Respondent/ MSRTC.

12. Mrs. Reddy, learned Advocate appearing for the Respondent/ MSRTC, has strenuously opposed these petitions. The contention is that all the three Petitioners have mentioned their age as 41 years in their statements of claims filed in 2011. As such, t