SAVARI NATHU (G.) Vs. SUBHASH SILK MILLS, BOMBAY

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE facts which have led to this appeal are briefly as follows : The second labour court at Bombay by its order under appeal dated 12 August, 1965 dismissed twenty application for reinstatement filed on behalf of the appellants who were retrenched. The full bench of this court in Soma Ramjee Varghade v. Sri Madhu Sudden Mills, Ltd., Bombay 1965 I.C.R. 261 has held that a retrenched person is not an employee according to the definition given in the Bombay Industrial Relation Act, and therefore cannot make an application before the labour court. I am bound by this decision but the law has been amended thereafter, so that the present definition in S. 2(13) stands as follows : 'employee' means any person employed to do any skilled or unskilled work for hire or reward in any industry, and includes - (a) * * * (b) a person who had been dismissed, discharged or retrenched or whose service have been terminated from employment on account of any dispute relating to change in respect of which a notice is given or an application made under S. 42 whether before or after his dismissal, discharge, retrenchment or, as the case may be, termination, from employment.'

(2.) ACCORDING to this, a retrenched person is expressly included in the definition of 'employee'. The result is that in case of a person retrenched after the amendment (which is dated 1 May, 1965) there can be no doubt that he will be able to make an application that before the labour court. The question that arise in this case decision are : - (1) Whether a person who has been retrenched before the amendment came in force will come under the definition of 'employee' as amended ? (2) If he dose, what will be the position if the application was filed before the amendment came in force ?

(3.) SEE in this regard Maxwell on the Interpretation of Statutes, 10th Edn., p. 214. But nevertheless, so far as the first question is concerned, I think that the amendment law will be applicable to a person who has been retrenched before the amendment came in force, because the law does not relate to any act of retrenchment, but to the status of the person. For example, if a particular act was not a crime before a certain enactment came in force, but became one by virtue of the provisions of that enactment, then the act committed before the coming in force of that law, would not be a crime; but if the amended law applies to the persons possessing a certain status, then it cannot be insisted on that this status should have been acquired before the law came in force. What was necessary was that when the right came to be enforced that status was there. For example, if the law confers a certain privilege on a married woman, which did not exist before it, then in order to apply that law, it will be not necessary that the status of being married was acquired after the Act, it will be sufficient when the Act was applied the status was that of a married woman. In Weldon v. Winslow (1884) 13 Q.B.D. 784 and in certain other cases, it was held that the powers given to a married woman by the Married Women's Property Act, 1882, of suing in all respects, as if she was unmarried, would enable her to sue in respect of torts or breaches of contract committed before the passing of the Act. The statute conferred a certain right on a married woman. The relevant time was that, when she chose to exercise that right, and not the time when she acquired the status of a married woman. So the answer to the question would be that a retrenched person though retrenched before the amendment, can after the Act, make an application before the labour court.