Court No. - 7
Case :- WRIT - C No. - 39224 of 2018 Petitioner :- M/S Giriraj Packaging Respondent :- State Of U.P. And 2 Others Counsel for Petitioner :- Virendra Kumar Yadav Counsel for Respondent :- C.S.C.
Hon'ble Saumitra Dayal Singh,J.
1. Learned counsel for the petitioner submits the order determining the amount of default and the compensation awarded by the Deputy Labour Commissioner is wholly exparte inasmuch as no notice had been served on the petitioner before that order came to be passed on 30.07.2018. It is then submitted that recall application filed by the petitioner has also been wrongly rejected by the order dated 20.09.2018, inasmuch as the registered post by which the summons are claimed to have been served on the petitioner, were never received.
2. Learned Standing Counsel on the other hand, points out that in the first place there is a remedy against the order dated 30.07.2018 under Section 17 of the Payment of Wages Act, 1936. On the other hand a registered notice was dispatched to the petitioner which was not returned unserved. In such circumstances, an inference of deemed service was made and thereafter the order dated 30.07.2018 was passed. Therefore the ex-parte proceedings were wholly proper since the petitioner failed to appear in response to the notice.
3. Having considered the arguments so advanced by learned counsel for the parties and having perused the record, it does not appear to be a case of any apparent illegality as may warrant interference with the order passed by the Deputy Labour Commissioner rejecting the recall application for recalling of the order dated 30.07.2018. It is undisputed, before proceeding to pass an exparte order against the petitioner, a notice had been dispatched by registered post A.D. and the same was not returned unserved. The address to which such notice was dispatched also appears to be of that of the petitioner. Merely because the word "Shree" may not have been mentioned on the envelope, though the name was otherwise correctly described and the address and the location to which the notice had been dispatched were correctly filled up, together with absence of any evidence that such notice was served on any other person or at any other address negates the objection being raised by the petitioner that the notice was not received by it.
4. Accordingly, the writ petition in so far as it has been filed against the order dated 20.09.2018 rejecting the recall application filed by the petitioner is dismissed.
5. In view of the fact that the proceedings are exparte, the present writ petition is disposed of with a direction in case the petitioner files an appeal under Section 17 of the Act within a period of three weeks from today along with a certified copy of this order and subject to its complying with the other conditions regarding pre-deposits etc, that appeal may be entertained and decided on merits, without raising any objection as to limitation in view of the fact that the petitioner otherwise appears to have been pursuing his remedy of recall and the present writ petition.
6. The writ petition is accordingly disposed of.
Order Date :- 30.11.2018 S.Chaurasia