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Constitutional Petition No.D-4514 and C.M.A. No.28831 of 2013, heard on 13th March, 2015.

----Ss. 33, 53 & 54---Industrial and Commercial Employment (Standing Orders) Ordinance (VI of 1968), S.O.12(3)---Constitution of Pakistan, Art.199---Constitutional petition---Dismissal from service---Grievance petition---Jurisdiction of National Industrial Relations Commission---Scope---Employer (Bank) was an "establishment" and respondent a "workman" within the meaning of Industrial Relations Act, 2012---Jurisdiction to adjudicate grievance petition of "workman" lay with the National Industrial Relations Commission---Counsel for the employer bank, had misconceived Cl.(3) of Standing Order 12 of Industrial and Commercial Employment (Standing Orders) Ordinance,1968---Present matter coming within scope of Industrial Relations Act, 2012, proper forum was National Industrial Relations Commission---High Court declined interference under constitutional jurisdiction. Shoukat Ali Choudhry for Petitioner. M.A.K. Azmati for Respondent No.1. Asim Manzoor Khan, D.A.-G. and Abdul Jalil Zubedi, A.A.-G. Date of hearing: 13th March, 2015.

By means of a short order dated 13-3-2015 we dismissed this petition for reasons to be recorded later. The following are our reasons for having done so. 2. Learned counsel for the petitioner submitted that the respondent No.1 was a workman within the meaning of the labour laws. He was employed with the petitioner, a banking company ("Bank"). Disciplinary action was initiated against the respondent No.1 by the Bank in terms as stated in para 2 of the petition and he was ultimately dismissed from service. Being aggrieved by such dismissal and the failure of his appeal internally as per the Bank"s procedures, the respondent No.1 filed a grievance petition in the Vth Sindh Labour Court. Learned counsel submitted that this petition was, inter alia, time-barred and the Bank filed its objections to the same. The grievance petition was filed by the respondent No.1 on or about 18-1-2012. By an order dated 1-10-2012, the Labor Court directed that it would, as directed by this Court by its order dated 19-9-2012, continue the proceedings pending before it till the final decision in matters pending before a Full Bench of this Court. (We may note that those matters were ultimately decided by the Full Bench by a judgment reported as KESC and others v. NIRC and others 2015 PLC 1. By that judgment the learned Full Bench held that the (Federal) Industrial Relations Act, 2012 was a valid piece of legislation.). 3. Being aggrieved by the order of the Labour Court as above, the respondent No.1 filed a revision petition before the Sindh Labour Appellate Tribunal. By means of its order dated 26-8-2013, impugned herein, the tribunal directed that the grievance petition filed by the respondent No.1 ought to be heard by the NIRC constituted Under the (Federal) Industrial Relations Act, 2012 ("2012 Act"). Being aggrieved by this decision the Bank filed the instant petition under Article 199 of the Constitution. 4. Learned counsel for the Bank submitted that the grievance petition of the respondent No.1 lay, as per the case sought to be made out by him (which of course the Bank denied on the merits) under Standing Order 12 of the Industrial and Commercial Employment (Standing Orders) Ordinance, 1968 ("Standing Order 12"). Reference was made to clause (3) of Standing Order 12. Learned counsel submitted that, as therein provided, a grievance petition lay under section 25-A of the erstwhile Industrial Relations Ordinance, 1969 ("1969 Ordinance"). That meant that the grievance petition had now to be filed with concerned Labour Court constituted under the relevant provincial statute, being (previously) the Industrial Relations Act, 2008 (as made applicable in Sindh by the Provincial Act XV of 2010) and now replaced with the Sindh Industrial Relations Act, 2013. The matter did not lie under the (Federal) 2012 Act and therefore the learned Tribunal had erred in coming to the contrary conclusion by means of the impugned order. 5. After having heard learned counsel as above and considered the point, we were unable to agree. It is not in dispute that the Bank is an establishment within the meaning of the 2012 Act. As already noted it is also not in dispute that the respondent No.1 is a workman. Section 53 of the 2012 Act constitutes the NIRC. Section 54(h) confers jurisdiction on the NIRC to deal with cases of individual grievance of workmen. It is not in dispute that the grievance raised by the respondent No.1 through the aforementioned grievance petition is an individual grievance within the meaning of the 2012 Act. Therefore, jurisdiction to consider the same lay with the NIRC and the impugned order correctly noted that the grievance petition had to be heard by the NIRC. With respect, in our view learned counsel for the Bank has misconstrued clause (3) of Standing Order 12. As presently relevant, it can be regarded as comprising of two parts, one substantive and the other procedural. The substantive part creates the right in favour of the workman and provides, inter alia, that the services of a workman shall not be terminated except by an order in writing which must explicitly state the reason for the action taken. The procedural part provides for the remedy, i.e., the forum where a workman, aggrieved by any violation of the substantive part, could bring his petition. As already noted, Standing Order 12 makes reference to section 25-A of the 1969 Ordinance. The impugned order was not concerned with the substantive part. It merely noted, in effect, that since the 2012 Act applied to the present case, the proper forum was NIRC under the said Act and not the Labour Court set up under provincial legislation. With this we were in entire agreement. As is well known, the existence of a right (the substantive part of Standing Order 12(3)) and the forum where such right can be asserted or redress claimed (the procedural part of Standing Order 12(3)) are separate and distinct. The substantive part of Standing Order 12(3) remains unaffected. However, the procedural part has altered. Matters that fall within the (Federal) 2012 Act must now be dealt with by the forum provided by that law, the NIRC. Matters that fall within the provincial legislation (now the Sindh Act of 2013 referred to above) are to be dealt with by the Labour Courts constituted/continued under the provincial legislation. Since admittedly the present matter comes within the scope of the 2012 Act, the proper forum is the NIRC and not otherwise. The impugned order therefore did not suffer from any illegality or other infirmity as would warrant interference in constitutional jurisdiction. The petition failed and was dismissed. 6. For the foregoing reasons, we had dismissed the petition by means of the short order. HBT/M-33/Sindh Petition dismissed.

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