Md. Mustaffa Vs. the Management of Bokaro Steel Plant and anr.

.....extended period of limitation maintainability - held, if the provision of a statute speaks of entertainment of appeal, it denotes that the appeal cannot be admitted to consideration unless other requirements are complied with. the provision of sub-section (1) of section 173 permits filing of an appeal against an award within 90 days with a rider in the first proviso that such appeal filed cannot be entertained unless the statutory deposit is made. the period of limitation is applicable only to the filing of the appeal and not to the deposit to be made. it, therefore, appears that an appeal filed under section 173 cannot be entertained i.e. cannot be admitted for consideration unless the statutory deposit is made and for this purpose the court has the discretion either to grant time to make the deposit or not. no formal order condoning the delay is necessary, an order of adjournment would suffice. the provisions of limitation embodied in the substantive provision of the sub-section (1) of section 173 of the act does not extend to the provision relating to the deposit of statutory amount as embodies in the first proviso. therefore an appeal filed within the period of limitation or within the extended period of limitation, cannot be admitted for hearing on merit unless the statutory deposit is made either with the memo of appeal or on such date as may be permitted by the court. no specific order condoning any delay for the purpose of deposit under first proviso to sub-section (1) of section 173 is necessary. [new india assurance co. ltd. v md. makubur rahman, 1993 (2) glr 430 and new india assurance co. ltd. v smt rita devi, 1997(2) glt 406, approved. new india assurance co. ltd. v birendra mohan de, 1995 (2) gau lt 218 (db) and union of india v smt gita banik, 1996 (2) glt 246, are not good law]. - 6. the main contention raised by the petitioner is that he had no knowledge about the age and that is why he challenged only in the year 1995. this contention also..........labour court vide its impugned award dated 27.8.2002 which is sought to be challenged after considering the entire evidence on record and after hearing the parties came o the conclusion as under:10. from the discussions made above i find that in fact no cutting has been made in the date of birth of md. mustafa, driver, staff no. 012568, bokaro steel plant, bokaro steel city, so the reference itself appears to be incompetent. from the above discussions i further find that there has been over writing on figure 8 against column no. 3 the date of birth of descriptive roll (ext. m-10) of the workman but from naked eye it does not appear that the figure 5 has been made figure 8 by doing such over writing. on behalf of the workman no iota of evidence has been brought on the record to indicate that he noted 25 years as his age in the descriptive roll rather from the documents of the workman such as the ltc ext. m-7 and m-8 together with ext. w-1 it appears that the workman is in the habit of giving different age at the different stage of his service. in the result, i find and hold that no cutting has been made in the date of birth of workman md. mustafa and md. mustafa is entitled for no relief. this is my award.6. the main contention raised by the petitioner is that he had no knowledge about the age and that is why he challenged only in the year 1995. this contention also does not hold good for the sole reason that annexure-2 as has been annexed by the petitioner, is another document which has been signed by him and thus the contention about having no knowledge is not justified.7. be that as it may the fact remains that he has raised this dispute about correction of age pursuant to issuance of a notice of retirement by the management and not before that.8. secondly, it is an admitted fact that he has collected the entire retiral dues including gratuity, provident fund etc. and had signed the settlement without any objection.9. in the aforesaid background and also in.....