MADRAS STATE ELECTRICITY BOARD Vs. COMMISSIONER OF LABOUR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE petitioner is the Madras State Electricity Board, constituted under the Electricity (Supply) Act (54 of 1948), to which I shall hereafter refer as the Electricity Act. When the Board was constituted with effect from 1 July 1957, it took over the employees who had up to then been in the employ of the Government of Madras in the Electricity Department. Some of the employees so taken over were clerks and typists who had been appointed wholly on a temporary basis under the statutory rules applicable to Government servants. Under these rules their services were liable to be terminated without notice and had to be terminated if candidates regularly recruited in accordance with the rules were available for appointment. Even after the typists and clerks had passed into the employ of the Electricity Board, they continued to be governed by the rules applicable to civil servants in the employ of the Government under the transitory regulations promulgated by the Board under Section 73 (c) of the Electricity Act. In due course, after the Board had made arrangements to recruit its clerical personnel, many of those appointed under the emergency provisions to hold their appointments on a temporary basis were discharged with a month's notice. Some of them preferred appeal to the Commissioner for Workmen's Compensation, as the appellate authority, under Section 41 of the Madras Shops and Establishments Act (36 of 1947 ). The Board contended that the provisions of the Madras Shops and Establishments Act did not apply to the discharged clerical employees of the Board, and the Board applied to the Commissioner of Labour under Section 51 of that Act to determine the question in dispute, whether these employees were governed by the provisions of the Madras Shops and Establishments Act. By his order dated 23 December 1959 the Commissioner negatived the contentions of the Board, and he held that the provisions of the Madras Shops and Establishments Act applied to the discharged clerical employees. The Board applied under Article 226 of the Constitution for the issue of a writ of certiorari to set aside the order of the Commissioner of Labour dated 23 December 1969.

(2.) THE Madras Shops and Establishments Act applies to persons employed in shops and commercial establishments, as those expressions have been defined by that Act. The relevant portion of the definition of "establishment" in Section 2 (6) of the Act does not take us very far, because it says in effect that establishment means a commercial establishment. The relevant portion of the definition of commercial establishment in Section 2 (3) of the Act is : 'commercial establishment' means an establishment which is a clerical department of an industrial undertaking. Section 2 (12) (ii) defines a person employed to mean also a member of the clerical staff employed in an industrial undertaking. That the petitioner Board, constituted under the Electricity Act, entrusted with the right and duty of generating electricity and distributing it, is an industrial undertaking as that expression is normally understood, can admit of no doubt. The expression "industrial undertaking" itself has not been defined by the Madras Shops and Establishments Act, and it should therefore receive its normal meaning in English language. The learned Counsel for the respondent referred also to State of Bombay v. Hospital Mazdoor Sabha 1960 I L. L. J. 251, where the expressions "industry" and "undertaking" were construed with reference to the provisions of the Industrial Disputes Act.

(3.) THE learned Counsel for the petitioner contended that the clerks employed under the Board could not be said to constitute a department of an industrial undertaking within the meaning of Section 2 (3) of the Madras Shops and Establishments Act, because the word "department" signified a separate or separable portion of a building, and admittedly the clerks employed by the Board were scattered in various offices all over the State. Unity of premises of work, in my opinion, is not the criterion to decide whether the Board, as an Industrial undertaking, has a clerical department within the meaning of Section 3 (3) of the Act. As the learned Additional Government Pleader pointed out, the expression used in Section 2 (12) (ii) of the Act is " clerical staff. " Neither the use of the expression " department" in Section 2 (3) of the Act, nor the use of the expression " staff" in Section 2 (12) (ii) of the Act, brings in the concept of the premises where the department or the staff works. That was emphasized by reference to Sections 20, 21 and 22, for example, which referred to the premises of an establishment, which in relation to the clerical department of an industrial undertaking could only mean premises where the members of the clerical staff of the industrial undertaking work. The statutory provisions that apply to premises where an establishment, that is, an establishment consisting of the members of the clerical staff of an industrial undertaking works, left intact the concept of what constitutes an establishment or commercial establishment, that is, with reference to the clerical department of an industrial undertaking. Obviously, the fact that the Electricity Board functioned from a number of premises scattered all over the State did not make it any the less an industrial undertaking. Unity of the industrial undertaking was not impaired by the number of places where the Board carried on its industrial undertaking. Similarly the fact that the clerical staff of the Board was scattered in a number of buildings all over the State did not impair the unity of the concept of the Board as a commercial establishment. All that was required was that the Board should be an industrial undertaking, and that there should be a clerical department of that undertaking. That clerical department could then constitute a commercial establishment within the meaning of Section 2 (3) of the Act.