Point of Law : There was no discretion left with learned Writ Court under Article 226 of the Constitution to grant a relief in favour of respondents herein to which they were not entitled under the 1993 Scheme or which was not the import of Reference made to Tribunal.

JUDGMENT :

Magrey, J.

1. This Letters Patent Appeal, initially registered as LPA No.7/2019 and subsequently renumbered as LPAOW No.03/2019, has been filed against the judgment and order dated 30.11.2018 passed by the learned Writ Court in OWP No.429/2018, with further prayer to allow the said writ petition which had been filed by the appellants challenging the Award dated 18.09.2017 passed by the Central Government Industrial Tribunal-cum-Labour Court-II, Chandigarh in Case No.ID No.10/2016, directing the appellants herein to grant temporary status to the respondents herein to be entitled to all the benefits as available to the workmen who were granted temporary status as per the Casual Labourers (Grant of Temporary Status and Regularization) Scheme of 1993 of the Government of India.

2. The brief facts of the case are that the members of the respondent-Association, 37 in all, are stated to have been engaged by the appellants as casual labourers for the discharge of different functions in Radio Kashmir, Srinagar, on contract basis from time to time since 1991. They raised an industrial dispute before the Regional Labour Commissioner(C), Jammu, regarding regularization of their services. The dispute ended into failure on 31.10.2015. Consequently, the Regional Labour Commissioner, Jammu, somewhere around 18.12.2015, made a Report on Failure of Conciliation to Ministry of Labour, Government of India, New Delhi, for necessary action. The Central Government/Government of India, Ministry of Labour, in turn, vide order dated 29.03.2016, exercising its powers conferred by Clause (d) of sub-section (1) and sub-section (2A) of Section 10 of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 (14 of 1947) made a Reference of the said dispute, specified in the Schedule appended thereto, for adjudication to the Central Government Industrial Tribunal-cum-Labour Court No.2, Chandigarh, (hereafter, the Tribunal) with direction that the Tribunal shall give its award within a period of three months. The Schedule of the order read as under:

“Whether the action of the management of Radio Kashmir, Srinagar representing through its Chief Executive Officer in not regularizing the services of 37 casual workers of Radio Kashmir Srinagar w.e.f. the date of their joining in the department is legal and justified? If not, to what relief these workmen are entitled and from which date?”

3. The respondents herein filed their statement of claim, reiterating their grievance and case, as briefly narrated above. The appellants herein in their objections filed thereto, apart from taking a detailed preliminary objection to the maintainability of the Reference on the ground that the dispute was not an industrial dispute within the meaning of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, and, therefore, pleading lack of jurisdiction of the Tribunal, contested the claim of the respondents, inter alia, on the ground that the respondents did not fulfil the criteria prescribed by the Casual Labourers (Grant of Temporary Status and Regularization) Scheme of 1993 of the Government of India (hereinafter, 1993 Scheme). The appellants with their objections appended certain documents, including a photocopy of the list of casual labourers working on job contract basis at Radio Kashmir, Srinagar, signed by Mr. Rafiq Raaz, Station Director, reference to which would be made later in this judgment.

4. So far as the objection taken by the appellants to the maintainability of the Reference before the Tribunal, is concerned, the Tribunal, relying on the decision of the Supreme Court in All India Radio v Santosh Kumar, (1998) 3 SCC 237, overruled the same.

5. As regards the main point of Reference made to it by the Central Government viz. whether the action of the management of Radio Kashmir, Srinagar, in not regularizing the services of 37 casual workers of Radio Kashmir Srinagar with effect from the date of their joining in the department, was legal and justified, the Tribunal held that there was nothing on the file