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Director General of Works, C.P.W.D v. Regional Labour Commissioner, (Central) & Ors.

Disposed of
Court
Supreme Court of India
Decided
4 February 2008
Bench
Arijit Pasayatauthor, P. Sathasivam
Case no.
Civil Appeal No. 1071 of 2002
Result
Appeal disposed of.

Headnote

Precedents - Reliance upon - High Court referring to the order of Supreme court without indicating as to how fact situation was identical - Also not considering other aspects - Hence, order of High Court set aside and matter remitted back to it.

The question which arose for consideration in this l appeal was whether the Division Bench of High Court was correct in dismissing the Letter~ Patent Appeal on basis of the decision of this court in the case of * Surinder Singh & Anr. v. The Engineer in Chief CPWD & Ors. by just referring to it.

r J:. Disposing of the appeal, the Court HELD: The Division Bench of High Court except referring to an order of this Court in * Surinder Singh & Anr. v. The Engineer in Chief CPWD and Ors., did not even I' indicate as to how the fact situation was identi_cal. The ,Jt-order in Surinder Singh's case shows that it was about the ...... entitlement of daily wagers to the same wages as paid to l' 'permanent employees' for 'identical work'. There is no i factual finding in the instant case that the work done was identical. Further several other issues like entitlement to Cycle allowance, Cost of uniform, Washing allowance, Increments etc. was questioned on the ground that these are payable only to workers who are appointed to regular posts. Unfortunately, the High Court did not consider that aspect also. Thus, the impugned order of the High Court is set aside and the matter is remitted back to the High Court for fresh consideration in accordance with law. [Paras 3 and 4] [361-F, G; 362-A, B]

*Surinder Singh and Anr. v. The Engineer in Chief CPWD and Ors. 1986 (1) sec 639 - referred to.

Headnote as published in the Digital Supreme Court Reports by the Supreme Court of India. Paragraph references point to the judgment below.

Judgment

Dr. ARIJIT PASAYAT, J. 1. Heard learned counsel for the parties.

¶2Challenge in this appeal is to the order passed by a Division Bench of the Delhi High Court dismissing the Letters Patent Appeal filed by the present appellant questioning the correctness of the order passed by a learned Single Judge.

¶3The Division Bench referred to an order of this Court in Writ Petition Nos.59-60 and 563-570/83 in the case of Surinder Singh & Anr. v. The Engineer in Chief CPWO & Ors. dated 17th January, 1986. Except referring to the order of this Court in question, the Division Bench did not even indicate as to how the fact situation was identical. As the order in Surinder Singh's case (supra) shows the case under consideration was about the entitlement of daily wagers to same wages as paid to "permanent employees" employed to do "identical work". There is no factual finding in this case that the work done was identical. Further several other issues like entitlement to Cycle allowance, Cost of uniform, Washing allowance, Increments etc. was questioned on the ground that these are payable only to workers who are appointed to regular posts. Unfortunately, the High Court did not consider that aspect also.

¶4That being so, we set aside the impugned order of the High Court and remit the matter to the High Court for fresh consideration in accordance with law. Since the matter is pending since long, the High Court is requested to dispose of the appeal expeditiously, preferably by the end of July, 2008.

¶5The appeal is disposed of accordingly.

Case details

Arising from

CIVILAPPELLATE JURISDICTION : Civil Appeal No.1071 of 2002.

From the final Judgment and Order dated 8.11.2001 of the High Court of Delhi at New Delhi in LP.A. No. 622 of 2001.

Ashok Bhan, Asha G. Nair and Shreekant N. Terdal for the Appellant.

Lalita Kaushik, B.V. Balaram Das and Debasis Misra for the Respondents.

Source: Supreme Court of India, Digital Supreme Court Reports, via the Indian Supreme Court Judgments open dataset (CC BY 4.0). Text was extracted from the official PDF and may contain conversion errors. Check the official PDF before relying on it.