New Delhi: The Supreme Court has ruled that a workman could be dismissed from service for using filthy language against a superior without any provocation.

Allowing an appeal filed by Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd, a Bench comprising Justice N Santosh Hegde, Justice Tarun Chatterjee and Justice P K Balasubramanyan upheld the order of the Management dismissing N B Narwade.

With this order, the Supreme Court set aside three concurrent findings of three lower courts that punishment of dismissal would be disproportionate to the misconduct.

The Labour Court, Single Judge of the Bombay High Court and its Division Bench had all dismissed the appeal filed by Mahindra and Mahindra and directed reinstatement of Narwade who was found guilty of abusing his superior in a filthy language without any provocation on November 22, 1991.

The apex Court Bench said: "In this case, all the forums below have held that the language used by the workman was filthy. We, too, are of the opinion that the language used by the workman is such that it cannot be tolerated by any civilised society."

"Use of such abusive language against a superior officer, that too not once but twice, in the presence of subordinates cannot be termed to be an indiscipline calling for lesser punishment in the absence of any extenuating factor," Justice Hegde, writing for the Bench, said.

Thursday, 24 February , 2005, Source: PTI