SRI T D RAMAYYA PANTULU, INDUSTRIAL TRIBUNAL FOR ENGINEERING FIRMS AND TYPE FOUNDRIES Vs. KUTTY AND RAO (ENGINEER) LTD

JUDGEMENT

(1.) On the 5 March, 1948, by G. O. Mis. No. 1115, the Government issued a notification which runs, Whereas industrial disputes have arisen between the workers and managements of certain Engineering firms and Type foundries in the Province of Madras and whereas industrial disputes are apprehended in the rest of the Engineering firms and Type foundries in respect of certain matters; .... in the exercise of the powers conferred by Section 7(1) and (2) read with Section 10(1)(c) of the industrial Disputes Act, 1947 .... His Excellency, the Governor of Madras hereby constitutes an industrial Tribunal consisting of one person, namely, Sri T. D. Ramayya Pantulu....and directs that the said industrial disputes be referred to that Tribunal for adjudication. It is seen that in this notification there is no reference to any specific disputes between any group of workers and managements; nor is there any specification of the firms in which disputes between the management and workers existed. The short question to be decided in this appeal is whether a general notification of this kind without specification of either the disputes or the firms in which disputes have arisen, is competent under Section 7 of Act XIV of 1947. Subba Rao, J., held that it was not competent and that the Tribunal had no jurisdiction to enquire into disputes brought before it by workers in any particular firm.

(2.) There is no doubt that this notification is a valid one under Section 7, in that it gives jurisdiction to a particular Tribunal over the whole of the Province of Madras with regard to disputes arising in engineering firms and type foundries; but the question immediately before us is whether it is equally valid under Section 10(1) of the Act.

(3.) The general purpose of the Act is to settle disputes which have arisen or are apprehended. It is the duty of the Board, or Court of Enquiry, or Tribunal as the case may be, to make enquiries in accordance with the terms of reference and in accordance with the provisions of the Act and the rules framed thereunder. Under Section 11(3) every Board, Court, and Tribunal has the same powers as are vested in Civil Courts under the Civil Procedure Code; and every enquiry or investigation by a Board, Court, or Tribunal, shall be deemed to be a judicial proceeding within the meaning of Secs.193 and 228 of the Indian Penal Code; and according to the rules framed under the Act it is the duty of the Chairman of the Board, Court, or Tribunal to call upon the parties to state their case. It is thus clear that in accordance with elementary principles of justice as well as the provisions above set out, it is the duty of a Tribunal to give notice to the parties to the dispute. It would therefore be necessary, if the notification of the Government were competent, for the Tribunal to issue a notice to the workers and management of every engineering firm and every type foundry in the Province and ask them to come forward and state their cases with regard to disputes of which the Tribunal knows nothing and in which no dispute may have arisen or may even have been apprehended. Such a procedure would be impracticable and not in consonance with public interest; because it would foster disputes. The learned Advocate-General conceded this position and was therefore forced to argue that the Government may have had in mind, when they drew up this notification, certain particular firms which we may designate as A, B, C, D, E and F, say, and intended the notification to apply to those firms as well as to other firms like G.H.Z. which the Government did not have in mind; and that it would be the duty of the Tribunal, so the learned Advocate-General contends, to consider only such disputes, as were brought before it by the management or workers of individual firms. In other words, the Tribunal was not to act suo motu and enquire of all the engineering firms and type foundries in the Province whether there were any disputes that they desired to have settled, but to wait until it was moved by the workers or management of engineering firms and foundries. If that were the intention of the Government, it would infringe the provisions of Section 10(2), which lays down the procedure to be adopted when parties to an industrial dispute desire to have their differences settled. In such a case, they must apply, not to the Tribunal, but to the Government to refer the matter to a Tribunal. In this view of the matter, therefore, this notification was not competent.