' Mahmood-ur-Rehman, an officer Grade-IL of the. National Bank of Pakistan, posted at Toba Tek Singh, was dismissed from service on 8-8-1984, and he filed a grievance petition under section 25- A, Industrial Relations Ordinance, 1969, on 1-9-1991, Punjab Labour Court No,4 at Faisalabad. The same was dismissed on 6-4-1993, as being barred by the law of limitation. He has come up in appeal.
2. Apparently, the petition, having been preferred about seven years after the officer's removal from service, is hopelessly time barred. He, however, maintains that in the intervening period he had been filing departmental appeals, review petitions, etc. And had also been representing and requesting for an opportunity being given for personal hearing. Neither, according to him, the same were rejected, nor was the result ever communicated to him, and thus the Bank could not raise the limitation question and seek dismissal of the grievance petition on that sole technical ground.
Learned counsel for the Bank, however, urges that the appellant could not cross or overcome the bar of limitation by taking up such frivolous pleas, as it was obligatory upon him to explain delay of each and every day, but he had not cared to submit with his grievance petition even an application for condonation of delay. Without there being nothing on record, it is submitted, pendency of departmental appeals, etc. Could not be presumed, and the appellant ought not to be afforded an edge over his employer on the strength of a false and fabricated averment.
3. Along with the appeal had been filed by the appellant an application under Order 41, rule 27 read with section 151, C.P.C. Seeking permission to lead additional evidence. Reply to the aforesaid application of the appellant was submitted by the respondents on 10-7-1994, and the application was disposed of by my learned predecessor, by accepting in additional evidence a postal receipt tendered as Exh.P-34. Subsequently on 15-1-1996, the respondents submitted an application under Order 41, rule 27, C.P.C. This application was replied on 25-2-1996.
4. Respondents have said in their application dated 15-1-1996 that on checking the record, they had discovered that the review petition claimed by the appellant to have been preferred to his superiors had actually been rejected way back in 1985-86, and the appellant had also been intimated accordingly. Documents dated 4-4-1985, 21-9-1986 and 28-9-1986 have been placed on record, as Annexures 'C', 'B' and 'A', to establish the aforesaid assertion. These documents are sought to be tendered in additional evidence, intended to be adduced by the employer in a permissible manner. Surprisingly, on the one hand, while submitting their reply to the appellant's application under Order 41, Rule 27, C.P.C., the respondents had given a lie to the claim of the appellant made to the effect that he had been filing departmental appeals and review petitions and the same had remained undecided so far, whereas on the other hand, the respondents in their own application dated 15-1-1996 under Order 41, Rule 27, C.P.C. Have now made mention of such documents available with them in the shape of appeals and review petitions, preferred by the appellant in the year 1985-86, and prayed that they be permitted to tender those documents in evidence, with a view to repudiate the assertion of the appellant that his appeals/review petitions were still pending with his employer, having not been disposed of, and the result having not been communicated to him, over the years.
5. The learned Labour Court in the course of the impugned judgment has made a strange observation. It is to the effect that the grievance petitioner had failed to bring on record any document to prove pendency of his appeal/review petition, if any. This, however, probably was not possible, as the appellant's appeal/review petition, if he had actually filed the same, must be available on the record of the employer who could, of course be required, on seeking aid of the Court, to produce the same. Such effort was not undertaken by the petitioner before the Labour Court. He says that it was by inadvertence that he had failed to do so. I agree with the learned counsel for the respondents that inadvertence does not constitute a cogent reason for over- looking such serious lapse on the part of the employee. The respondents had taken up a specific plea that the grievance petition was palpably time-barred and that should have put the appellant on guard and he should have taken steps to meet such an objection and to establish that he had approached the Labour Court in time. It has now become an old and obsolete concept to urge that a party to the litigation' ought not to be allowed to fill up lacunae in his evidence and to improve upon his case. Amendment in pleadings may be allowed and request for additional evidence may be granted at quite a late stage, even when the litigation has reached the A forum at the apex, but a party may not be permitted to set up a new case altogether by making such a manoeuvre.
6.Now that the fact of the appellant having filed departmental appeals/review petitions/representations has been admitted by the employer, by taking up the plea that it is in the nature of discovery of a new material, and when the documents now being referred to by the respondents were not put to the appellant in cross-examination, by way of confrontation, to falsify his claidi of having preferred petitions/appeals/departmental representations, one after the other, all having remained undecided, the 'appellant too, I think, has made a justified request for leading additional evidence in that behalf. It is averred by the appellant that the documents, in question, proposed to be produced in additional evidence by the respondents have in actual practice been fabricated or manufactured afterwards, since had these documents been in existence, the respondents would not have earlier made a categorical denial in that regard, and, as already said, the same must also have been put to the appellant, on cross-examining him before the Labour Court. Now, there is a request made by the employer himself that additional evidence be allowed to be adduced in regard to the appellant's appeals/review petitions/departmental representations. Previously, it was urged that obtaining such documents in additional evidence would not be of any assistance to the Court, and the appellant was endeavoring to avail of an opportunity in that behalf in order only to pester and vex his employer and in a bid to prolong the litigation. Here it may be observed that procrastination of the proceedings would, in no way, advance the cause of the appellant and he is, therefore, not supposed to relish it or aim at it.
Additional evidence, it is well-known, may not as much be the need of a 'party to the litigation as it may become the need of the Court itself, and the Court on its own may call for more evidence, as such. I have the positive feeling that for advancing the ends of justice and for arriving at a correct, rational and just decision, the parties be permitted to produce, in addition, documentary as well as oral evidence, having real nexus with and relevance to the issue of limitation. I would, therefore, set aside the finding of the learned lower Court rendered regarding limitation and would remand the case for its re-decision on merits, including the question of limitation, in accordance with law.
7. The parties shall appear for further proceedings in the Labour Court on 27-3-1996. Final decision shall be announced by 23-7-1996 at the latest. There shall be no order as to costs.