Termination of service of substitute railway employees without providing reasons and without paying retrenchment compensation amounts to retrenchment and is invalid under sections 25f and 25g of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947.

( 1 ) THESE are four petitions by four different persons seeking similar relief in almost identical circumstances.

( 2 ) EACH of the petitioners was employed by the Railways as a substitute . Three of (hem were taken on as safaiwales (cleaners) and one as a khalasi. They came to be so employed on different dates in the years 1971, 1972 and 1973. The exact dates are not material. All of them continued to work as substitutes for many years until, by notices dated 8th September 1978, their services were suddenly terminated. The notices were verbatim the same, except for the name of the employee to whom they were addressed. They read as follows :

in pursuance of Rule 149 of the Indian Railway Establishment Code Volume I, I hereby give notice to. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . s/o. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Substitute S andw Safai- wala under CFO-DLI that his services shall stand terminated with effect from the date of expiry of a period of one month from the date on which this notice is served on or, as the case may be tendered to, him. sd/- (Illegibie) Asstt. Mechanical Engineer-1 V D. S. Office, New Delhi. The petitioners maintain that this termination of their services was wholly invalid, and have moved for writs of certiorari to have these notices quashed.

substitutes are defined in paragraph 2315 of the Indian Railway Esablishment Manual (2nd ed. ). It says that "substitutes" are persons engaged in. Indian Railway Esablishments on regular scales of pay and allowances applicable to posts against which they arc employed. These posts may fall vacant on account of. a railway servant being on leave or due to nonavailability of permanent or temporary railway servants and which cannot be kept vacant. the rights and privileges admissible to Substitutes arc stated. in paragraph 2318, of which the first sentence enjoins that

substitutes should be afforded all the rights and privileges as may be admissible to temporary railway servants, from time to time on completion of six months continuous service. . . . . . . . . . . . it is thus clear that after serving for six months, a substitute is, in all respects, on a par with a temporary railway servant. The Railways admit, and it is otherwise obvious, that all the petitioners in the prevent cases had attained that status long before their services were terminated.

( 3 ) THE power to terminate the service of a temporary railway servant by giving notice is contained in clause (1) of Rule 149 of the Indian railway Establishment Code (Volume I, 1971 edn. ). One month s notice is required if he was engaged on a contract for a definite period and the contract does not provide for any other period of notice . In other cases, 14 days notice is enough. Clauses (2) to (5) are not relevant. But, clause (6) of the Rule adds the following important rider:

notwithstanding anything contained in clauses (1), (2) and (4) of this rule, if the Railway servant or Apprentice is one to whom the provisions of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, apply, he shall be entitled to notice or wage in lieu thereof in accordance with the provisions of that Act. in their counter-affidavits, the Railways denied that the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 applied to the petitioners. However, at the hearing, counsel for the Railways abandoned that contention. He very properly conceded that the Act did apply to the petitioners. For, admittedly, they were employed by the Railways to do. . . . . . manual. . . . . work. . . . . for reward . And, it has been held that the Railways are an industry : see Somu Kumar Chatterjee and another v. The District Signal Telecommunication Engineer and others, 1970 Lab. I. C. 629 (1 ). Therefore, all the requirements of the definition of. workman in the Act were fulfilled, and there can be no doubt that it applied to the Petitioners. Indeed, in Nand Lall v. The Union of India and another, 1978 Lab. I. C. 1267 (2), the Railways did not even dispute that