Supreme Court Upholds Tribunal Award in Industrial Dispute Act Case Because 240 Days Actual Work Deemed Continuous Service. Section 25B of Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 Creates Legal Fiction Treating 240 Days Work in 12 Months as One Year Continuous Service, Making Section 25F Retrenchment Conditions Applicable.

Case Note & Summary

This was an appeal by special leave to the Supreme Court of India against an award of the Central Government Industrial Tribunal, Dhanbad, in Reference No. 56 of 1961, under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947. The appellants were the employers in relation to Digwadih Colliery, and the respondents were their workmen, specifically Jaldhar Singh, a badli workman. Jaldhar Singh was employed as a badli workman, defined by Standing Orders as a person appointed in the post of a permanent employee or probationer who was temporarily absent. He worked as a badli during the calendar years 1959 and 1960 in different capacities. His employment was not continuous; there were six breaks of one day to a week in 1959 and eight breaks of one day to a week in 1960. However, he actually worked for more than 240 days in each calendar year. In January 1961, the colliery terminated his service without giving notice, wages in lieu of notice, or compensation. The termination was not due to disciplinary action, voluntary retirement, superannuation, or ill-health; it was because there was no work for him, which constituted retrenchment under Section 2(00) of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947. Conciliation proceedings failed, and the industrial dispute was referred to the Tribunal. The core legal issue was whether Jaldhar Singh, having worked for more than 240 days in each of the calendar years 1959 and 1960 but with interruptions, satisfied the condition of 'continuous service for not less than one year' under Section 25F of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, so as to attract the conditions precedent to retrenchment. A subsidiary issue was the effect of the Industrial Disputes (Amendment) Act, 1964 on the interpretation of Sections 25B and 25F. The employers contended that Section 25F required both continuous service and service for not less than one year, and that Jaldhar Singh's service was broken, not continuous. They relied on the general definition of continuous service in Section 2(eee), which defined continuous service as uninterrupted service, with interruptions permitted only for sickness, authorised leave, accident, illegal strike, lock-out, or cessation of work not due to the workman's fault. The workmen relied on Section 25B, which provided that a workman who actually worked in an industry for not less than 240 days during a period of 12 calendar months was deemed to have completed one year of continuous service. They argued that since Jaldhar Singh worked more than 240 days in each year, Section 25F applied and the employers had failed to comply with its conditions. The Supreme Court held that the definition in Section 2 of the Act does not apply if there is anything repugnant in the subject or context, and that Section 25B specially defined 'one year of continuous service' for the purposes of Sections 25C and 25F. The Court observed that if Section 25B had not been enacted, the employers' contention would have been unanswerable, because Section 25F would require 12 months of service without interruptions other than those stated in Section 2(eee). However, Section 25B created a legal fiction: service for 240 days in a period of twelve calendar months was equal not only to service for a year but was to be deemed continuous service even if interrupted. Therefore, both conditions in Section 25F were fulfilled if the workman had actually worked for 240 days during a period of twelve calendar months. It was not necessary to read the definition of continuous service into Section 25B because the fiction converted the service into continuous service for one complete year. The Court also considered the Industrial Disputes (Amendment) Act, 1964, which omitted Section 2(eee) and substituted a new Section 25B consolidating the previous provisions, and amended Section 25F(b) to refer to 'completed year of continuous service'. The Court held that the amendments only removed discordance and vagueness; they did not change the substantive law that uninterrupted service was never necessary if the total service was 240 days in a period of twelve calendar months. The Supreme Court dismissed the appeal, holding that the decision under appeal was correct. The termination of Jaldhar Singh's service was illegal because the employers had not complied with the conditions precedent to retrenchment under Section 25F, as he was deemed to have completed one year of continuous service. The award of the Tribunal was upheld.

Headnote

Issue of Consideration

Final Decision

The Supreme Court dismissed the appeal, holding that the award of the Industrial Tribunal was correct. The badli workman Jaldhar Singh was deemed to have completed one year of continuous service under Section 25B having actually worked for more than 240 days in each calendar year 1959 and 1960, despite interruptions; hence Section 25F conditions applied and were not complied with, making the termination illegal. The appeal was dismissed.

Law Points