Viswanatha Iyer, J.:— the appellant is the petitioner in the writ petition. He is running a retail outlet for petroleum products in Palakkad in which the second respondent was employed as a sales assistant till 4 December 1988. Alleging non-payment of the minimum wages payable under the Minimum Wages Act, 1948 (the Act in brief), the second respondent filed an application before the first respondent under S. 20 of the Act for direction to pay him the difference in wages as also compensation of Rs. 500. The claim was in time only for the period subsequent to 11 September 1988 and was barred for the earlier period, being filed beyond the prescribed period of six months. There was accordingly a petition, separately filed, for condonation of the delay in filing the application, in so far as it related to the earlier period.

2. After contest, the authority functioning under the Act, allowed the application in part. The claim for the period up to and inclusive of 11 September 1988 was held to be time-barred, the authority not being able to discern any good ground to condone the delay in filing the application relating to that period. The authority, however, allowed the application for the subsequent period from 12 September to 4 December 1988. Apart from directing payment of the differential wages, he also directed payment of an amount of Rs. 3,235 by way of compensation, as against Rs. 500 claimed. A copy of the authority's order is Exhibit P6.

3. The second respondent-employee accepted the order Exhibit P6 and did not challenge it in any manner known to law. But the employer felt aggrieved in so far as compensation was awarded in the sum of Rs. 3,235 when the claim was only for Rs. 500. He challenged the order Exhibit P6 in so far as it was against him by filing the writ petition Original Petition No. 8796 of 1990. The challenge was not however accepted by the learned Single Judge who dismissed the writ petition. It is so stated in the learned Judge's judgment. If the matter had rested with his dismissal, there would have been no controversy, nor this writ appeal, But the learned Judge went further, as a sentinel on the qui vive, to vindicate the constitutional right enshrined in Art. 23 of the Constitution of India. Accordingly he held that even in the absence of a petition by the employee second respondent,

“once the Court finds in a petition filed at the instance of the employer that violation of the constitutional right is writ large, the Court shall not shirk from its duty to set things right as the Court has public accountability.”

In this view of the matter, he issued a direction to the employer-appellant to pay the second respondent the entire amount claimed by him as minimum wages, from 1 January 1988 ignoring the bar of time of a substantial portion of the claim. This incidental award made by the learned Judge has resulted in this appeal by the employer, his contention being that the learned Single Judge could not have issued the direction when the employee himself has not challenged that part of Exhibit P6 which was against him in manner known to law. The decision of the learned Single Judge is reported as Ponnambalan v. Deputy Labour Commissioner [1993 — II L.L.N 857].

4. It is undoubtedly true a la felicitous judgment of Patanjali Sastri, C.J, in State Of Madras v. V.G Row [A.I.R 1952 S.C 196] that the High Courts and the Supreme Court have been assigned the role of sentinels on the qui vive as regards the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution. But this does not enable the High Courts while exercising jurisdiction under Art. 226 of the Constitution or otherwise to issue directions which are contrary to or not warranted by the laws of the realm. The High Courts are no doubt entitled to review the validity of any law on the touchstone of the fundamental rights and declare them void if they are violative of any of those rights (vide Art. 13 of the Constitution). But so long as the law itself is a valid piece of legislation it is not open to the High Courts, exercising powers under Art. 226, to act de hors the law. Discipline of the law requires the Courts to act within the parameters of the law, so long as they are not offensive of any of the fundamental rights. It was observed long back by a Division Bench of this Court in Kuriakose v. State of Kerala [1988 - II L.L.N 285], that the power of this Court is to keep within the bounds of law and not to issue directions contrary to law, a sentiment which the Supreme Court recently echoed in Kerala Solvent Extractions, Ltd. v. Unnikrishnan [1993 - II L.L.N 432]:

“In recent times there is an increasing evidence of this perhaps well-meant but wholly unsustainable tendency towards a denudation of the legitimacy of judicial reasoning and process. The reliefs granted by the Courts must be seen to be logical and tenable within the framework of the law and should not incur and justify the criticism that the jurisdiction of Courts tends to degenerate into misplaced sympathy, generosity and private benevolence. It is essential to maintain the integrity of legal reasoning and the legitimacy of the conclusions. They must emanate logically from the legal finding and the judicial results must be seen to be principled and supportable on those findings. Expensive judicial mood of mistaken and misplaced compassion at the expense of the legitimacy of the process will eventually lead to mutually irreconcilable situations and denude the judicial process of its dignity, predictability and respectability. In this case, we have no hesitation to hold that both the Labour Court and the High Court have erred.”

The Courts ought not to ignore the prescriptions of the law, as any laxity in this regard may lead to uncertainty and chaotic consequences. Otherwise there is the risk that in trying to tackle the case of a particular person's problem in a case that may look fine for him; trouble will be caused for a lot of other people and to the public at large by making the judicial process uncertain. If a relief is barred by the provisions of a statute, it will not be for this Court to grant the relief outside the provisions of the statute.

5. The claim of the second respondent employee for the period up to 11 September 1988 was clearly barred under the provisions of the Act. Even assuming that there was ground for condonation of the delay, that question did not arise as the employee accepted the rejection of his claim and did not challenge it. The order Exhibit P6 became final to that extent.

6. The question before the Court was not whether the failure to pay the minimum wages amounted to violation of the fundamental right guaranteed under Art. 23 of the Constitution of India. The question was whether the Court in exercise of its jurisdiction under Art. 226 should grant relief to a person who had not sought it, and who had accepted the verdict against him. There was no case that the employee was precluded for any reason, from challenging the order, Exhibit P6 in so far as it went against him. Nor was there any case that the prescription of a period of limitation by the Act was unconstitutional or void. We cannot, therefore, agree with the learned Single Judge that Art. 23 of the Constitution required this Court to bypass the provisions of taw and procedure and grant a relief which is otherwise not admissible under the Act and that too in a writ petition filed by the employer, the employee himself being quite content with the award in his favour.

7. The direction given by the learned Judge to pay the disallowed portion of the employee's claim, namely the differential wages from 1 January to 11 September 1988, was, therefore, not warranted. We set aside the same. The employer-appellant has not challenged the rest of the order Exhibit P6 in this appeal.

8. The writ appeal is, therefore, allowed as indicated above. No costs.