BOMBAY GAS CO LIMITED Vs. GOPAL BHIVA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These 16 appeals arise out of petitions filed by the 16 respondents who are the employees of the appellant, the Bombay Gas Co. Ltd., under S. 33C(2) of the Industrial Disputes Act (No. 14 of 1947) (hereinafter called the Act). These respondents are the District Syphon Pumpers and Heat Appliances Repairers Inspectors, and in their applications made before the Second Labour Court, Bombay, they alleged that as a result of the award made by the Industrial Tribunal in reference (I.T.) No. 54 of 1949 published in the Bombay Government Gazette on May 11, 1950, they were entitled to a certain benefit and they moved the Labour Court to compute that benefit in terms of money and to direct the appellant to pay the same to them. The direction in the earlier award on which this claim was based was made in these terms:-

(2.) The demand was resisted by the appellant on several preliminary grounds which formed the subject matter of several preliminary issues framed by the Labour Court. The principal contentions raised by the appellant by way of preliminary objections were that the applications made by the respondent were not maintainable under S. 33C(2) of the Act and that the said applications were barred by res judicata by reason of awards made in other proceedings between the same parties. It was also urged by the appellant that if the claim made by the respondents was held to be justified by the direction of the award on which the respondents relied, then the said direction was given by the earlier Tribunal without jurisdiction and as such, was incapable of enforcement. On the construction, the appellant urged that the said direction did not cover the cases of the respondents, and it was argued that even if the said direction was held to be valid and it was also held that it gave the respondents the right to make the present claim, the conditions precedent prescribed by the said direction had not been satisfied by any of the respondents, and so, on the merits, their claim could not be sustained.

(3.) The Labour Court took up for trial 10 preliminary issues in the first instance and by its judgment delivered on June 3, 1961, it rejected all the preliminary pleas raised by the appellant. In other words, the preliminary issues framed by the Labour Court were found in favour of the respondents. Thereafter, the applications were set down for hearing on the merits and evidence was led by both the parties in support of their respective claims. On considering the evidence, the Labour Court came to the conclusion that the respondents had established their claims, and so, it has directed the appellant to pay to the respondents the respective amounts specified against their names in the award. The plea raised by the appellant that the whole of the claim made by the respondents should not be allowed on the ground of belatedness and laches, was, according to the Labour Court, not sustainable under S. 33C(2). That is why the Labour Court computed the benefits claimed by the respondents in terms of money from the date when the earlier award became enforceable until the date of the present applications filed before it. The appellant had come to this Court by special leave against the preliminary decision and the final order passed by the Labour Court in favour of the respondents.