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Constitutional Petition No. 1074 of 1974, decided on 2nd February 1976.

-- S. 25-A-Resignation-Interpretation-Re-instatement-Application submitted by employee demanding special increment and adding "otherwise I shall have to tender resignation"-Employee, held, only said in his application that special increment should be given to him otherwise he would be compelled to tender his resignation and not that the application should be treated as resignation in event of refusal to grant special increment-Services of employee, held, could not be terminated on basis of such application.

Aftab Ahmed Alavi for Petitioners.

Ali Amjad for Respondents.

Date of hearing: 2nd February 1976.

The petitioner No. 1 is a statutory Corporation created under the West Pakistan Motor Vehicles Ordinance and is carrying on transport services throughout the Province of Sind, while the petitioner No. 2 is an officer working in the Corporation at Hyderabad. The respondent No. 3 was .employed as a Turner in the organisation of petitioner No. 1. According to the petitioner No. 1, on 20th September, 1973, the respondent No. 3 moved an application to the petitioner No. 2 for grant of advance increments to him as a special favour because he could not cope up with his expenses in the salary which he was drawing. It is further submitted that in the application there was a condition that either the increment should be allowed to the respondent No. 3 or otherwise his application should be treated as resignation and the same be accepted. This application was forwarded by the petitioner No. 2 to petitioner No. 1 for appropriate action. The petitioner No. 1 declined to allow the application and asked the petitioner No. 2 to accept the resignation of the respondent No. 3. The resignation was accordingly accepted vide letter dated 24th November 1973. The dues of the respondent No. 3 were also paid to him on 15th December 1973.

2. The respondent No. 3 gave a grievance notice to the petitioner No. 1 on 2nd January 1974 and on 22nd January 197 4 he filed an application under section 25-A of the Industrial Relations Ordinance, 1969 before the Junior Labour Gourt. The Junior Labour Court accepted his application: vide order dated 15th February 1974 and ordered his re-instatement in service with back benefits. An appeal was filed against the order of Junior Labour Court before the Labour Court but the same was also dismissed vide order dated 22nd June 1974.

3. When the petition came up for hearing the main controversy that arose between the learned counsel for the parties was about the alleged resignation of respondent No. 3, a photo-copy of which has been filed as Annexure 'A' with this petition. In the photo-copy the words used are "otherwise my resignation should be accepted". The ,contention of the learned counsel appearing for the respondent No. 3 was that respondent No. 3 never used these words and he had no intention to tender resignation, therefore the question of terminating his services did not arise. To resolve this controversy I summoned -the record of the lower Courts and perused the original resignation. It only .says that "I shall have to tender resignation" which means that the respondent No. 3 had only said in his application that special increment should be given to him or otherwise he would be compelled to tender his resignation and not that the application should be treated as a resignation in the event of refusal to grant special increment. The manipulation in the copy of this 14 application is so obvious that the learned counsel appearing for the petitioners had to accept that the application by itself could not be treated as a resignation. This being the position, the services of the respondent No. 3 could not be terminated by the petitioners as he had never tendered resignation. In these circumstances the orders passed by the Junior Labour Court and Labour Court do not call for any interference.

4. As a result of above discussion, I find that there is no substance in this petition which is hereby dismissed with costs.

S. A. H. Petition dismissed.

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