ANANDMAL Vs. STATE OF RAJASTHAN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS writ application by Anandmal and another under Article 226 of the constitution is directed against a notification No. 9/2/56-Lab. dated the 10th July, 1957, issued by the Government of Rajasthan under Section 3 read with Section 5 of the Minimum Wages Act, 1948, (Act No. XI of 1948) (hereinafter called the Act)by which certain minimum piece rates of wages with respect to employment in gota Kinari establishment as specified in Schedules A to F appended to this notification were enforced in the Ajmer area, that is, the area which comprised the state of Ajmer immediately before the 1st November, 1956, and it is prayed that this notification be quashed as being illegal and discriminatory.

(2.) THE petitioners are the proprietors of a Gota factory in Moti Katra, Ajmer. It is common ground between the parties that by a notification No. 9/2/56-Lab. dated the 11th July, 1956 (Ex. 1) published in the Gazette of India, Section III, dated the 21st July, 1956, the Chief Commissioner, Ajmer, acting under Section 27 of the Act directed that at item No. 16 of Part I of the Schedule to the Act "employment in Gota Kinari Establishment" be added, with the result that the schedule in its application to the Ajmer State as it then was, must be deemed to have been amended accordingly with effect from the date of the notification. It is further common ground that by another notification No. 9/2/56-Lab. dated the 6th September, 1956 (Ex. 2) issued under Clause (a) of Sub-section (1) of section 5 of the Act, the Chief Commissioner appointed a Committee to hold an inquiry and advice him in respect of the fixation of minimum wages in the employment in Gota Kinari Establishment in that State and the Committee was directed to submit its report within two months from the date of this order. It is not disputed that the term of this Committee was extended from time to time until it submitted its report on the 31st May, 1957. Thereafter by a notification of the 10th July, 1957 (Ex. 3), to which we have referred above and which is impugned before us, the Governor of the State of Rajasthan, fixed the minimum piece rates of wages as specified in the six Schedules appended to the notification for the area which constituted the State of Ajmer immediately before the 1st day of November, 1956, and which since that date became part and parcel of the State of Rajasthan as it was constituted under the States Reorganisation Act (No. 37 of 1956), and as it exists today.

(3.) IT may be pointed out at this place that it is a fact and is no longer disputed, though it was controverted in the petitioners' application (see paragraph seven thereof) that by a notification No. F. 1 (6) Lab. /56/10267 dated the 31st October, 1956 issued by the Secretary to the Government in the Labour Department by order of His Highness the Rajpramukh of the State of Rajasthan, as it then was under Section 27 of the Act, employment in Gota industry was also added to part I of the schedule to the Act. The position therefore, at the time the impugned notification was issued indisputably was that employment in Gota industry had become a scheduled employment under the Act (being in Part I of the Schedule)throughout Rajasthan. By the notification which is questioned before us, minimum wages for those employed in the Gota industry, however, came to be fixed for, what we may, for the sake of facility of reference, call only the Ajmer area of the present State of Rajasthan, and no similar action for those employed elsewhere in the same industry in this State has yet been taken, though it is obvious that employment in the said industry also stood incorporated in Part I of the Schedule of the Act as early as the 31st October, 1956, in the remaining part of the State.