DECISION ' By its order dated 6th November, 2000 Sindh Labour Court No,V, Karachi turned down the request of the applicant-Company for recalling the respondent (Le. Qazi Zamiruddin) for the purpose of confronting him with certain documents specified in the order. This Revision Application has been filed to call in question the correctness of the said impugned order.
2. I heard the arguments of the learned counsel of both the parties Mr. Mehboob Rizvi for the applicant-Company and Mr.. Islam Hussain on behalf of the respondent. I have also given my best thought to the order of learned lower Court.
3. It is an admitted position that the documents by which the respondent was to be confronted were not available on record as they were not produced alongwith the reply statement. Nor were the said documents disclosed in the said pleading of applicant-Company. Thus if the respondent was to be confronted with those documents they were to be produced for the first time. It is only the documents which were not within the knowledge of the party concerned (applicant-Company) and were subsequently discovered could be produced at subsequent stage provided further that their bringing on record would advance the interest of justice. Despite this if such documents seek to change (amend) or substitute wholly or partially the plea of the party, they would not be allowed to be proved or brought on record. It goes without saying that the said documents were, well within the knowledge of the applicant-Company right from the beginning of the litigation and yet they were neither produced alongwith their pleading (Reply Statement) nor disclosed in such pleading.
This finds support from the affidavit of Muhammad Younus Khan, General Manager of the applicant-Company. It clearly shows that the documents in question could not be filed with reply statement nor were they produced at the time of cross-examination of the respondent due to oversight, This only means that the documents were within the knowledge of the applicant- Company but it was due to their negligence that they could neither be produced nor disclosed at the earlier time i,e, at the time of filing written statement. Moreover the perusal of the documents would show that the applicant-Company seek to prove by them though indirectly that the respondent was not a workman.
4. Thus since the documents in question were within the knowledge of the applicant-Company and yet they were not produced or disclosed at appropriate time they could not be allowed to be produced for any purpose, may it be for purpose of confronting the respondent or for any other purpose at the belated stage. Moreover the applicant-Company, as pointed out above, also wanted to prove by these documents that respondent was not a workman, thereby substituted the original plea by new one.
' For the above-reason the learned Labour Court was right in rejecting the prayer of the applicant- Company for producing the documents for purpose of confronting the respondent. Accordingly the order passed by the learned lower Court is upheld and this Revision Application is dismissed.