The court affirmed that reinstatement of workers is unjustified following proven misconduct of violence, emphasizing the necessity of discipline in the workplace and setting aside prior orders of reinstatement and compensation.

ORDER :

Pavan Kumar Dwivedi, J.

Introduction These appeals have been filed by the employer as well as workmen both against the common order dated 14.03.2024 passed by the Single Bench of this Court in bunch of Misc.Petitions. Looking to the similitude of the cases, all the appeals are being decided by this common order, for the sake of convenience the facts are taken from W.A. No. 834/2024.

1.2 Initially objection regarding maintainability of the appeals was taken by the registry of this Court, which was overruled by the Court vide order dated 30.04.2024 in view of the Full Bench decision of this Court in the case of Shailendra Kumar Vs. Divisional Forest Officer , reported in 2017 (4) MPLJ 109 .

1.3 The point of challenge on behalf of the employer is that even after the charges of misconduct of the workmen found proved the learned Single Judge has directed for payment of a sum of Rs.2,50,000/- to the workmen in lieu of their reinstatement when the Court itself recorded that reinstatement in view of the charges found proved is not justified.

1.4 On the other hand the workmen have come against part of the order, whereby the direction of Labour Court for reinstatement of workmen has been set aside.

Facts of the Case

2. The short facts of the case are that appellant is a company incorporated under the Indian Companies Act, 1956. It is engaged in the business of manufacture and sale of different grades of electrodes. Its manufacturing unit is situated at 44-46, Industrial Area, Kila Maidan, Indore (M.P.).

2.1 The D & H Workers' Association (registered Trade Union) submitted a demand letter on 21.10.2014 thereby raising a demand for revision of the wages of the workmen/employees of the Company. The present respondents in the set of appeals of the employer are the original petitioners, who were Office Bearers of the Trade Union at the relevant time. When the demands were not met, the Trade Union started agitation in the factory premises on the ground that there is delay in consideration of demands.

2.2 In continuation of the above dispute three workmen representatives (Santosh Kushwaha, Harendra Singh Tomar and Mukesh Raghunandan) entered into the cabin of Managing Director Mr. M.D.Khatri around 11.30 am on 18.07.2015 and started inquiring about wage revision, when the said Managing Director informed them that due to financial status of the Company there can be no increase in the wages for now, they started abusing and misbehaving with him and went out of the cabin. After 10 minutes, they returned with four more persons (Ram Chaudhary, Ramesh Yadav, Shivnarayan and Bindeshwari Mishra) and started pressurising him for executing agreement of wage revision that day itself, otherwise they will not allow factory to run and also threatened for dire consequences, they vandalized the Cabin and the Managing Director was manhandled, at that time two more persons also came (Lekhraj and Dinesh Chaudhary). Thereafter they went to the cabin of the staff of the MD and vandalised the same, the Glass of the Cabin was crushed by them, then they caught hold of Piyush Panthari, Executive Assistant to the Vice Chairman and Prakash Ramani, Manager Accounts, both of them were working in the cabin of Prakash Ramani. The aforementioned workmen forcefully brought them downstairs and not only abused them, but also beaten them and threatened with dire consequences, if their demands were not fulfilled. The above said two persons sustained injuries because of the beating by those workmen. An FIR was registered on the same date around 2.22 pm at police station Malharganj.

2.3 The em