KARACHI, April 23: All appeals moved by employees of the provincial government corporations and institutions abated on Monday when the Sindh Service Tribunal held that in view of a Supreme Court judgment of June 2006, the appellants were not civil servants in contemplation of the law and could not agitate their grievances before it.
An SST bench comprising Justice (retd) Abdul Ghani Shaikh, Ashiq Ali Memon and Qadeer Ahmed Shaikh held that Section 3E of the Sindh Service Tribunal Act, inserted in 1994, declared that the employees of corporations and other autonomous organisations working under the administrative control of the provincial government would be ‘deemed’ civil servants for the purpose of litigating their service matters.
The provision effectively ousted the jurisdiction of the Sindh High Court and the dismissed employees, in particular, were deprived of the speedy and effective remedy provided by Article 199 of the Constitution. However, the Sindh Civil Servants Act was not amended to incorporate the ‘deeming’ clause.
An identical amendment was made by Section 2A of the Federal Service Tribunal Act without changing the definition of ‘civil servant’ in the (federal) Civil Servants Act.
A nine-member bench of the Supreme Court held in June 2006 that the employees of federal corporations could not move the FST for redress of their grievances as their was no corresponding provision in the parent Act.
The Sindh Service Tribunal took notice of the SC judgment and asked the parties to address arguments on the question of jurisdiction.
Lawyers representing the appellants argued that corporations and local body institutions like the universities, the city government, the education boards and the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board were not affected by the SC judgment as they had been established under their own statutes. Assistant Advocate-General Tabassum Ghazanfar expressed the view that the SC judgment was fully applicable and the SST was no longer available to the employees.
The SST bench held that the rationale of the Supreme Court verdict was fully applicable to the appeals moved by the provincial corporation employees and their appeals could not proceed before the tribunal.
The SC judgment had not specified the new competent forum and the federal corporation employees approached the Sindh High Court for its determination.
A three-member SHC bench ruled that irrespective of the status of the employees (whether civil servants or not), the (federal) corporations themselves continued to remain amendable to the court’s writ jurisdiction. The rule of master-servant relationship would apply where the grievance of a petitioner is founded not on law but on violation of any condition contained in his service contract. The master-servant relationship will be inapplicable to cases where there is violation of statutory provisions or any other law, including norms of natural justice.
About 98 appeals became infructuous as a result of Monday’s SST ruling. The appellants, like the federal corporation employees, will have to move the high court for ascertainment of the competent forum to raise their grievances.