Workman Who Consciously Joined Transferable Job Can’t Refuse To Comply With Transfer Order: Delhi HC

The Single Judge Bench of Justice Girish Kathpalia held, “The scope and ambit of interference by the High Court under Article 226 of the Constitution of India while dealing with matters of transfers and postings of employees is extremely narrow and limited. Transfer of an employee being an incident of service, is purely in the domain of the employer based on administrative exigencies related to work profile, qualification and experience of the employee so that they could be best utilized.”

Advocate Pulkit Prakash represented the Petitioner while Advocate Varun Kumar represented the Respondent-Management.

The facts of the case suggested that when a Labour Court Reference was initiated, the petitioner workman appeared before the Labour Court and filed his Statement of Claim, pleading that he worked as Senior Foreman with the respondent management from September 25, 2007 till January 21, 2017 continuously, but thereafter he was not allowed to join duty and was never paid salary. After demonetization policy announcement of the government, senior officers asked him to give his identity card for getting some currency notes exchanged and since he refused to oblige, the officers got annoyed and told him that his services would be terminated.

Thereafter the respondent management passed an order thereby transferring him from Delhi to Chennai. He had submitted a written request that his transfer be deferred till March, 2017, so that his children’s studies do not suffer and that he should be given all facilities related to transfer as per the HR Manual of the respondent. The Labour Court passed the impugned Award, thereby holding that the respondent management had failed to prove the nature of duties assigned to the petitioner to be of managerial tone, so it couldn’t be denied that he was a “workman” within the meaning of Section 2(s) of the Act. The Labour Court also observed that the respondent management had not terminated services of the petitioner workman and had only transferred him to Chennai due to administrative exigencies in terms of his appointment, but he opted not to join there.

The core issue in this writ action was whether the transfer order passed against the petitioner by the respondent management was punitive or suffered from any vice of malafides, thereby illegal.

The Bench further added, “...transfer of an employee in a transferable service is a necessary incident of the service career, so unless the transfer decision is vitiated by malafides, there are no judicially manageable standards for scrutinizing all transfers and the courts lack the necessary expertise for personnel management.”

Reference was made to Clause 4 of the Appointment Letter issued to the petitioner workman wherein it was clearly stipulated that his place of posting would be in the National Capital Region and that the management in its discretion could transfer him to any of the offices, divisions, departments, sections etc., across the country. The Bench observed that the petitioner committed serious misconduct by refusing to accept the Transfer Order.

The Bench also clarified, “As regards the difficulties qua education of petitioner’s children, learned Labour Court in the impugned order correctly recorded that children of the petitioner being aged 6 and 4 years, no academic damage would have been caused to their career had the petitioner complied with the transfer order. The petitioner workman having consciously joined a job that was transferable across the country could not have refused to comply with the transfer order.”

Thus, dismissing the petition, the Bench upheld the Labour Court’s Order.

Cause Title: Ravinder Mandal versus M/S D.L.F. Universal Ltd. [Neutral Citation: 2024: DHC: 8540]

Appearance:

Petitioner: Advocates Pulkit Prakash & Arjun Mohan

Respondent: Advocate Varun Kumar

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