CALICUT HOSIERIES Vs. STATE OF TAMIL NADU

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a petition by the Calicut Hosieries Ltd. (accused 1) and three Directors of that firm (accused 2 to 4) for setting aside their convictions under Sections 23 and 24, Industrial Disputes Act, XIV [14] of 1947, read with Section 26(2) for having declared and carried on an illegal lock-out after a reference had been made by the Government of Madras to the Industrial Tribunal, Coimbatore, consisting of one person, viz, Sri C. R. Krishna Rao, for deciding certain Industrial disputes between certain hosiery factories in the Province of Madras and the workmen employed therein and a letter of the District Magistrate of Malabar to the accused drawing their attention to the fact that all disputes between hosiery employers and workers had been referred to the Industrial Tribunal, Coimbatore and that the lock-out during the pendency of the reference was illegal and should be terminated. The first petitioner firm has been ultimatly sentenced to pay a fine of Rs. 1000, and the directors of the firm (P. Ws. 2 to 4) have been sentenced ultimately, by the appellate Court, to pay a fine of Rs. 500 each.

(2.) I have perused the entire records, and heard the learned counsel for the petitioners and the learned Public Prosecutor contra. The learned counsel for the petitioners urged that the reference in this case by the Government to the Tribunal was far too vague and general and was invalid under the rulings of Horwill and Rajagopalan JJ. in Ramayya Pantulu v. Kutti and Rao, (Engineer) Ltd., 1949-1-M. L. J. 231 : (A. I. R. (36) 1949 Mad. 616) and of the Chief Justice and Mack J. in C. M. p. No. 3894 of 1949 a similar case but unreported. The facts there being more or less identical with the facts here, it was urged that as the reference to the Industrial Tribunal, Coimbatore, itself was illegal and void there could be no question of any illegal lock-out by these petitioners during the pendency of that reference (which is as if it were not, being void and of no effect) or of any offence committed by them under the Industrial Disputes Act. The learned Public Prosecutor while-conceding that the rulings above have held such references, including a reference as in this case, to be illegal and void, and that the petitioners would have been entitled to an acquittal bad the matters stood there, relied on Section 5 of Madras Act XII [12] of 1949 for urging that the reference to the Tribunal held to be invalid by those two Bench judgments of this Court, has been validated thereby, even for making this lockout illegal.

(3.) Section 5 runs as follows :