Denial of backwages is against cardinal principle of labour legislation.

The Order of the Court was as follows :

The petitioner has filed this writ petition praying to issue a writ of certiorari to call for the records on the file of the second respondent pertaining to his order passed in I.D. No. 176 of 1988 dated October 21, 1991 and to quash the same insofar as it denies the award of back wages to the petitioner for the period of his non-employment.

Heard the learned Counsel for the petitioner and the respondents as well.

In the affidavit filed in support of the writ petition, the petitioner would bring out his case stating that he was employed as a supervisor of the first respondent Bank from September 22, 1961; that on October 22, 1975, he got suspended pending enquiry into certain charges levelled against him; that the charge memo was issued on January 23, 1976 and he submitted his explanation on April 3, 1976; that only based on these and without any enquiry, he was dismissed from service on July 11, 1977.

The further case of the petitioner is that as per Clause 13 of the special bye-laws governing the employees of the first respondent Bank, it is the executive committee which has to pass the order of dismissal against which an appeal lies to the Board of Management; that the first respondent at the relevant time neither had the executive committee, nor the Board of Management and all the powers were with the Special Officer appointed to manage the affairs of the first respondent Bank and it was he who passed the order of dismissal and hence the petitioner was constrained to present his appeal before the Registrar of Co-operative Societies on May 5, 1978 against the order of dismissal dated July 11, 1977.

The further case of the petitioner is that his appeal was rejected by the Registrar on November 28, 1978 on ground that no appeal lies to him and hence the Writ Petition No. 3454 of 1979 was filed and the same was dismissed on March 9, 1983 on ground that there cannot be a writ petition against the Cooperative Society as it is not a State under Art. 226 of the Constitution of India; that however, the Court observed the following :

"The petitioner may be afforded an opportunity to prefer a revision under Sec. 97 of the said Act to the Registrar within one month from today, the Registrar will take it up on file and issue notice to the first respondent Bank. Thereafter, it will be open to the Bank to raise objections inter alia as to the maintainability of the revision and the necessity to issue a second show cause notice. In addition to the above, any other ground available to the Bank could also be raised. The Registrar will consider the same on merits. With this observation the writ petition is dismissed."

The rest of the case of the petitioner is that consequent to the order of this Court, he filed a revision on March 30, 1983 and the same got rejected on April 30, 1984 as not maintainable, against which further revision was filed before the Government on August 7, 1984 in which an order was passed on July 6, 1987 rejecting the petition by a laconic and non-speaking order, that ultimately he raised industrial dispute as per Sec. 2-A of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 before the Conciliation Officer on July 9, 1987 and on a failure report having been sent on March 10, 1988, it culminated in the order of reference of the dispute for adjudication by the second respondent as per the order of Tamil Nadu Government dated May 20, 1988; that the second respondent on enquiry, found the order of dismissal bad in law and in violation of the principles of natural justice since rendered without holding domestic enquiry in accordance with law and passed its award dated October 21, 1991 setting aside the order of dismissal and reinstating the petitioner in service, but without entitlement for back wages for the period of non-employment from July 11, 1977 to October 21, 1991. It is this portion of the award which denies back wages to the petitioner, that is challenged in this writ petition on