MOTILAL OMPRAKASH GENERAL MERCHANT Vs. JAGJIVAN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS petition is by the employer-respondent in a proceeding before the authority under the Payment of Wages Act, from an interlocutory order permitting the legal representatives of the original applicant to continue the proceedings. No doubt, the final order is appealable, but the employer-respondent has thought it fit to come here even now seeking an order in exercise of supervisory jurisdiction to the effect that in the instant proceeding the legal representatives cannot be permitted to proceed with the application of the employee under section 15 of the Payment of Wages Act which must be struck off. It is urged by the petitioner that the amendment in 1964 introducing the idea of legal representatives while enabling them in future proceedings under the Act to get substitution, at the same time shows that the legal representatives had no status under the Act before the amendment.

(2.) THOUGH the petitioner has been hasty, the matter having come up to this Court, it is proper for us to give our decision on the subject. The Payment of Wages Act has provided for a simple, cheap and summary procedure to enable employees, earning less than the prescribed monthly pay, to realise the arrear-wages from their employers. In fact, section 22 of the Act bars civil Courts from entertaining suits for the recovery of wages in so far as the same claim could have been recovered by an application under section 15 of the Act. Thus to hold in agreement with the petitioner that the legal representatives were incompetent, before the amendment of 1964, to pursue the proceedings would be in effect to maintain that the claim for arrear-wages as could be made by an employee dies with him and does not pass to the heirs as part of his estate. Such a proposition is repugnant to all the principles of jurisprudence. A claim for a liquidated amount from another person is part of the claimant's estate and passes on to its heirs who can sue subject of course to limitation and other legal requirements. Further, to hold that the claim for wages of persons drawing below Rs. 400 a month dies with them, while those for wages on a higher leval survives as part of their estate, would be a very absurd proposition. We are unable to find anything in the Payment of Wages Act, to justify such a conclusion.

(3.) NONE of these circumstances indicates that, in the Payment of Wages Act, there is exception to the principle recognised in the general law that the claim for arrear-wages survives to the benefit of the heirs of the employee.