Calcutta High Court (Appellete Side)
M/S. The Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited & ... vs Ajit Kumar Das & Ors on 25 August, 2020
Author: Soumen Sen
Bench: Soumen Sen
1
08.
25.8.2020
S.G./S.D.
M.A.T. 489 of 2020
With
CAN 4457 of 2020
CAN 4858 of 2020
M/s. The Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited & Ors.
versus
Ajit Kumar Das & Ors.
(Via Video Conference)
Ms. Reshmi Ghosh
Mr. Kaustav Bagchi
...for the appellants.
Mr. Dibyendu Chatterjee
Mr. Jamiruddin Khan
Ms. Sayanti Sengupta
....for the Respondent Nos. 7, 9 & 10.
The petitioners undertake to affirm and stamp the petition/application as per Rules within one month of resumption of normal functioning of the Court. Subject to such undertaking, the application is taken up for hearing through video conference.
CAN 4457 of 2020 is disposed of.
Learned counsel appearing on behalf of the appellants submits that the appellants have cleared all the dues of the contractor till May 2 2019 and since June 2019, no bill has been raised by the contractor; as a result, the payments cannot be released to the contractor.
Learned counsel appearing on behalf of the contractor submits that the bills have been submitted till June 2019, however, payments have been received upto April 2019, that too in the month of January 2020.
Although an issue has been raised as to the maintainability of the writ petition at the instance of the workers of the contractor, we feel that B.S.N.L. as a model principal employer is bound to release all the dues of the contractor so as to enable the contractor to make payments to its employees.
Under such circumstances, we dispose of this appeal by directing the contractor to submit all the bills that have remained unpaid till date to the appellant no. 4 within a period of fortnight from date. The said appellant upon scrutiny shall release the admissible dues to the contractor within four weeks thereafter. The contractor in turn shall release the dues of the labourers within a fortnight thereafter.
In view of the aforesaid order, there will be no requirement on behalf of the B.S.N.L. authorities to make any payment directly to the writ petitioners. The impugned order is set aside. 3
The writ petition shall appear before the appropriate Bench after nine weeks.
The order of learned Single Judge is modified to the aforesaid extent.
M.A.T. 489 of 2020 and the application being CAN 4458 of 2020 are disposed of.
(Soumen Sen, J.) (Saugata Bhattacharyya, J.)