invoke the jurisdiction of this Court under Article 226 of the Constitution to do so. There cannot be a hard and fast rule in such cases. Indeed, as the Supreme Court noted in Cooper Engineering Ltd. v. P.P. Mundhe, the Court should not normally encourage a challenge to a Part-I Award upon a finding that the enquiry was not fair and proper since it is open to the employer to seek an opportunity to lead evidence before the Labour Court upon which a challenge to the finding which has been arrived at can always be preferred. However, it would be appropriate in my view in the facts of the present case to consider and dispose of the challenge by the employer to the correctness of the award of the Labour Court insofar as it held that the enquiry was vitiated on account of a vagueness of the chargesheet. In the present case, the chargesheet which was issued by the employer, informed the workmen that it had "come to the knowledge of the management that on 9th June, 1982 the workmen along with other workmen had indulged in violence, bodily assault and threat with further dire consequences against the employee of the Company." The chargesheet cannot be described as anything but vague. The chargesheet does not contain the identity of the employee who was assaulted, any details of the nature of the assault and absolutely no reference to the time or place of the incident. Significantly, the chargesheet does not even purport to rely upon the alleged complaint dated 14th June, 1982, which was made to the management. The object of requiring the employer to present a chargesheet with a degree of precision, containing a disclosure of the circumstances of the case which are alleged to constitute misconduct, is to enable the chargesheeted workman to have a real opportunity of defending himself. To ask the workman to defend himself against a general allegation of misconduct without specification of particulars denies to him an effective right of defending himself. An employee who is called upon to defend himself must know what he has to defend himself against. What the employee is to defend himself against has to be discernible from the chargesheet which is issued to him. Chargesheets of the kind involved in the present case are replete with a great potential of mischief because if such chargesheets were allowed to stand, it would be open to the employer to lead any and every
