' The services of the 2 respondents, who were employed as workmen in the printing Department of the appellant-Mills, were verbally terminated along with the services of the other employees in the said Department on 14th May, 1980. Both the respondents as well as a number of other employees in the printing Department of the appellant-Mills filed grievance petitions before the learned IInd Labour Court challenging the oral orders of termination of their services. The appellant-Mills resisted the grievance petitions filed by the 2 respondents and the other employees on the ground that the entire printing Department of the Mills had been given on contract to one Khawaja Ahmad and that the employees in the printing Department were the employees of the contractor and not of the Mills. The learned Labour Court repelled this contention and held that the respondents and the other employees in the printing Department were the employees of the appellant-Mills, notwithstanding the fact that the labour work in the said Department had been given on contract to contractor Khawaja Ahmad. It accordingly has directed the appellant-Mills to re-instate the 2 respondents and also the other employees of the printing Department who had preferred grievance petitions, together with full benefits. The appellant-Mills preferred separate appeals in respect of each workman who had been so directed to be re-instated in service. 19 of the workers have compromised with the appellant-Mills and their appeals were disposed of in terms of the settlement. There remain only that of the 2 respondents.
2. It was contended by Mr. Saleem Raza, the learned Representative for the respondents, that the appeals against the 2 respondents are time-barred. He submitted that the decision in the 2 cases were announced on 26th November 1980, but applications for copies of the decisions were made on behalf of the appellant-Mills on 27th December, 1980, beyond the period of limitation, while the appeals to this Tribunal were preferred on 13th January, 1981, 48 days after the announcement of the impugned decisions. Mr. Mahmood Ghani, the learned Representatives for the appellant-Mills, while conceding that the application for the copies of the impugned decisions were made on 27th December 1980, submitted that the learned Labour Court had heard together the cases of several employees and had passed common orders in respect of them on 26th November, 1980. The learned Representative, further pointed out that by reason of the large number of separate orders which had to be passed, the copies of the decisions were not ready till 23rd December 1980, as appears from the endorsements on the certified copies of the decisions which he has filed alongwith his memos of appeals. The learned Representatives accordingly argued that the period from 26th November 1980 up to 23rd December, 1980, when the copies become ready should be excluded from the computation of 30 days within which the appeals had to be preferred or at any rate the delay in the filing of the appeals should be condoned in the circumstances of the case. I regret that I find no force in the contention of the learned Representative. Subsection (3) of section 37, I.R.O. Provides that an appeal to the Tribunal from a decision or order of the Labour Court shall be preferred within 30 days of the delivery or passing thereof. The word 'delivery' in the subsection has reference to the delivery of the judgment or decision by the learned Labour Court and not delivery of copy thereof to a patty. The law thus requires that the appeal must be preferred within 30 days of the announcement of the decision or order concerned. In the instant case, as already pointed out, the decisions against which the appeals have been preferred, were given on 26th November, 1980, as appears from the original copies of the decisions, while the appeals were preferred on 13th January 1981, i,e,, 48 days later. The period of 30 days cannot be computed from the date that the copies of the decisions were made ready, as the law expressly provides that the appeals had to be preferred within 30 days of the making or giving of the order or the decision.
Furthermore, no case for condonation of delay under section 5 of the Limitation Act has been made out. Admittedly applications for copies were made on 27th December, 1980, after the period of limitation bad expired. It is well settled that once the period of limitation starts running, it will continue to run, and in the instant cases the period of limitation started running on the day following the announcement of the decisions by the learned Labour Court.
3. Even on merits, I am inclined to agree with the view that 2 appeals must fail. The contention of the 2 respondents was that they were the employees of the appellant-Mills and in their evidence before the learned Labour Court they have so categorically asserted. On the other hand, the contention of the appellant-Mills was that the printing Department in which the respondents claimed that they were employed had been given on contract to Khawaja Ahmad and they were his employees. Khawaja Ahmad was examined by the appellant-Mills as their witness. He admitted that he had signed a contract with the appellant-Mills for the running of the printing Department.
He however, admitted that the 2 respondents were not his employees but they were employees of the appellant-Mills when he took over the contract of the printing Department and they continued to be the employees of the appellant-Mills till their services were terminated. Mr. Mahmood Ghani sought to assail the testimony of this witness with reference to the contract which he admittedly had entered into with the appellant-Mills. However, it may be pointed out that as Khawaja Ahmad was the witness of the appellant-Mills, it was not open to the appellant-Mills to challenge his testimony without declaring him as hostile witness. Furthermore an examination of the contract does not exclude the reasonable probability of the respondent being employees of the appellant- Mills. All that the contract says is that the contractor would engage his own employees for the working of the printing Department. Admittedly, the printing Department was functioning before it was given on contract to Khawaja Ahmad, and the workmen in that Department would thus clearly be the employees of the appellant-Mills. There is no evidence to show as to what happened to these employees. The fact that no mention is made in the contract in respect of these employees strongly supports the evidence of contractor Khawaja Ahmad that they continued to be the employees of the appellant-Mills. Khawaja Ahmad may possibly have a grievance against the appellant-Mills on account of the termination of his contract and the fact that the Mills have withheld an amount of Rs, 5,000 claimed by him, but these circumstances in my opinion are wholly insufficient for discarding the evidence of Khawaja Ahmad who is the witness of the appellant-Mills and whose testimony gains support from the circumstances indicated above.
' For the reasons discussed by me above, I find no merit in these 2 appeals and dismiss the same.