TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
1960 (9) TMI 118
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....ortance and a decision regarding the same is likely to affect a large number of similar cases. The jurisdiction of the Punjab Government to make the reference in question is challenged on two main grounds which are : (1) that the dispute between a Cantonment Board and its Record Keeper cannot be regarded as an industrial dispute as defined in the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, and (2) that the Punjab Government is in any case not the appropriate Government for the purposes of making a reference concerning a dispute, one party to which is a Cantonment Board. (3) I feel this is a fit case which should be heard by a larger Bench. Let this case be laid before my Lord the Chief Justice for orders under Clause (b) of the proviso to Rule 1 of Chapter 3-B of Volume V of Rules and Orders of the High Court. D. Falshaw, J. 4. This judgment will deal with two petitions filed under Article 226 of the Constitution, Civil Writ No. 532 of 1959 and Civil Writ No. 877 of 1959, the former filed by the Cantonment Board, Ambala Cantonment, and the latter by the Cantonment Board, Kasauli and Subathu Cantonments, and the Cantonment Board, Dagshai. 5. The facts in the first petition are that by n....
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....oard Employees Federation, it being stated that the workmen employed by the Kasauli Cantonment Board numbered about 70 and those o£ the Dagshai and Subathu about 50 each. The Cantonment Boards again raised preliminary objections regarding the jurisdiction of the Tribunal on the grounds that the Punjab Government was not the Proper referring authority and that the employees were not workmen within the meaning of the Industrial Disputes Act and also that the matters in dispute were covered by the reference to the National Tribunal, which has been referred to in connection with the other petition, These preliminary objections were overruled and the learned Tribunal proceeded to give an award by which 10 per cent of the consolidated wages, i.e. basic wage plus dearness allowance was to be paid to all workmen of the Boards, whether permanent or temporary, as hill compensatory allowance, but the award was not made retrospective and some compensation was ordered to be paid to the two retrenched employees. 8. The two main points involved in both these petitions are whether the Punjab Government and not the Central Government is the proper referring authority with regard to disputes....
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.... of the words in Section 2(a) "carried on by or under the authority of the Central Government". 10. In deciding the matter against the Cantonment Boards the learned Tribunal relied partly on a letter, dated the 7th of March 1957 issued by the Central Ministry of Defence and partly on the reported cases, Carlsbad Mineral Water Manufacturing Company Limited v. P. K. Sarkar, AIR 1952 Cal 6 and Shri Sankara Allom Limited v. State of Travancore-Cochin, AIR 1953 TC 622. 11. There is no doubt from the letter referred to above that the Government of India is of the view that the "appropriate Government" is the State Government in whose territory a particular Cantonment Board is situated. The letter contains the following passages : "The Ministry of Law in consultation with the Ministry of Labour have held that State Government is the 'appropriate Government' in respect of Cantonment Boards for the purpose or Industrial Disputes Act, 1947. Consequently Cantonment Boards will be required to apply the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, read with Industrial Disputes Rules made by the State Government in whose territory the Cantonment Board is situated. The Indu....
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.... The business was not the business of the railway which was being conducted by the appellants as the nominated authority of the railway. The business was the business of the appellants which they were conducting for their own personal profit and benefit. It was in no sense the business of Government and it appears to me that the appellants can in no sense be described as being persons authorised to carry on a Government business. They were licensees of Government under a contract and they were carrying on their own business and not that of Government or of the railway". He later observed : "The nature of the contract required considerable control by the Government, but that would not make the business carried on by the appellants as a business of Government carried on by the appellants by authority of Government". 13. I do not think there is any doubt that this case was clearly distinguishable from the present case, since I can see no analogy whatever between manufacturing and selling mineral waters on a railway system under a contract with Government and administering the affairs of a Cantonment Board under the supervision and control of the Government. A Canton....
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....rnment Or a State Government, the authority prescribed in this behalf, or where no authority is prescribed, the head of the department; (ii) in relation to an industry carried on by or on behalf of a local authority, the chief executive officer of that authority. According to Section 2(j) "industry" means any business, trade, undertaking, manufacture or calling of employers and includes any calling, service, employment, handicraft, or industrial occupation or avocation of workmen. In Section 2(k) "industrial dispute" means any dispute or difference between employers and employers, or between employers and workmen, or between workmen and workmen, which is connected with the employment or non-employment or the terms of employment or with the conditions of labour, of any person. In Section 2(s) "workman" is defined as meaning any person (including an apprentice) employed in any industry to do any skilled or unskilled manual, supervisory, technical or clerical work for hire or reward, whether the terms of employment be expressed or implied, and for the purposes of any proceeding under this Act In relation to an industrial dispute, includes any such per....
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....ay appertain to and partake of the nature of an industry while others may not. For instance, there is a necessary element of distinction between the supply of power and light to the inhabitants of a Municipality and the running of charitable hospitals and dispensaries for the aid of the poor. In ordinary parlance, the former might be regarded as an industry but not the latter. The very idea underlying the entrustment of such duties or functions to local bodies is not to take them out of the sphere of industry but to secure the substitution of public authorities in the place of private employers and to eliminate the motive of profit-making as far as possible. The levy of taxes for the maintenance of the services of sanitation and conservancy or the supply of light and water is a method adopted and devised to mate up for the absence of capital. The undertaking or the service will still remain within the ambit of what we understand by an industry though it is carried on with the aid of taxation, and no immediate material gain by way of profit is envisaged". The conclusion was reached in the following passage : "Having regard to the definitions found in our Act, the aim Or....
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....aries was mentioned, but others readily suggest themselves, such as the assessing and collecting of taxes, the registering of births and deaths, securing suitable places for the carrying on of any offensive, dangerous or obnoxious trade, calling or occupation, removing undesirable obstructions in public places and establishing and maintaining a system of public vaccination. All these are among the functions of Boards mentioned in the Act, but none of them appears to me to have any connection with the term "industry" even used in its widest sense. 17. The more recent judgment of the Supreme Court, State of Bombay v. The Hospital Mazdoor Sabha, AIR 1960 SC 610, was cited, but I do not think it helps the argument as it related to a group of large hospitals maintained by the Bombay Government, known as the J.J. group of Hospitals, and the judgment has nothing to say on the question what classes of servants of local bodies are employed in industry. My own view is that if the Legislature wished to make all employees of local bodies, and indeed all Government servants, "workmen" for the purposes of the Act it would be a perfectly simple matter to do so by suitably am....