Karnataka High Court upholds reinstatement of KPTCL employee who missed 632 days of work due to depression
The employee was dismissed from service in 2014 and he was reinstated in 2019 on the order of a labour court.
The KPTCL had argued that he had been warned multiple times and he gave an undertaking in 2012 that he would not be absent from work again. The Karnataka High Court Monday upheld the reinstatement of a Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation Limited (KPTCL) employee who had missed 632 days of work owing to depression.
A division bench of Chief Justice Prasanna Varale and Justice Krishna Dixit passed the order. The original order directing his reinstatement was passed by a labour court in 2019, which was further upheld in November 2022 by a high court bench of Justice Poonacha.
The KPTCL had initially argued that the workman had started as a station attendant in 2008 and, from 2010, he was absent from work on nine different occasions, amounting to 632 days. He was subsequently dismissed in 2014. The labour court reinstated him in the job in its 2019 order without retrospective pay.
The KPTCL had argued that he had been warned multiple times and he gave an undertaking in 2012 that he would not be absent from work again. The workman’s counsel rebutted that he had been suffering from a case of depression for which he was under medication and that, on several occasions, his mental condition had resulted in even his own family members being unable to trace him.
Justice Poonacha had observed, “It is clear and forthcoming from the facts of the present case that the respondent (workman) was not willfully absent from his duty and there was sufficient ground made out for his remaining absent (frm work). Further, the labour court, after noticing that it was also not the case of the petitioner that at the time of working hours it was not possible for the respondent to discharge his duties and has recorded a categorical finding in that regard.” The judge then dismissed KPTCL’s petition against the labour court order.
The division bench Monday further upheld this order, agreeing with the reasoning of the single-judge bench.
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