WESTERN INDIA COTTON LIMITED Vs. N RAGHAVAN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The revision petitioner, the plaintiff in O. S.76 of 1974, Sub Court, Tellicherry is the Western India Cottons Limited, Pappinissery, which instituted a suit for recovery of a sum of Rs. 5661.50 for damages caused to the plaintiff's car by the defendants, some of the workmen of the plaintiff company. Pending suit, an attachment before judgment was prayed for in respect of a sum of Rs. 4036.08 lying to the credit of the defendants in the Company towards bonus payable to them. An interim attachment was ordered. But after the defendants respondents entered appearance and opposed the application, the same was vacated and the application for attachment before judgment was dismissed on the ground that bonus would be 'wages of labourers' within the meaning of S.60, clause (h) of the Civil Procedure Code and therefore exempt from attachment. The tenability of this ruling has been canvassed in this Revision Petition which has been referred for decision to a Division Bench.

(2.) The bonus in question in the instant case is payable under an agreement between the employer and the workmen of the Company, arrived at through the Conciliation Officer under the Industrial Disputes Act. According to clause (1) of the terms of the settlement, the management agreed to pay 21 1/2 per cent of the total earnings of the workers as bonus for the year 1972-73 on or before 1st July 1974. It was in respect of the bonus thus payable that the attachment was sought to be levied.

(3.) On the terms of the agreement which forms the genesis of the payment, it appears to us that what was agreed to be paid as bonus was part of the earnings or the wages of the workmen though paid under the label of bonus. For that reason, it appears to us that the exemption under S.60, clause (h) of the C. P. C. would be attracted; especially would it be so, as it contains no definition of the term "wages" and the expression should therefore be understood in its ordinary, etymological or popular sense. That apart, the question has been canvassed before us very fully in the light of the provisions of Payment of Bonus Act, 1965. That Act by S.2(21) defines salary or wages as follows: