Industrial court has no jurisdiction to prosecute petition of contractual workers-Supreme Court

Aurangabad, July 22:

The Supreme Court has rejected a Special Leave Petition (SLP), refusing to intervene in the Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court's order that the industrial court has no jurisdiction to hear any case filed by contractual workers.

Justice R G Avchat of the Aurangabad bench had approved the petition of the Premium Transmission Ltd and had given the above orders. The Aurangabad Majdoor Sanghtana had filed SLP against the decision in the Supreme Court on July 5. The hearing of the case was held in front of the bench comprising of Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice Hemant Gupta.

What was the petition

The premium transmission company had hired some workers for work in power transmission equipment and similar manufacturing in the Shendra five-star industrial estate in Aurangabad. After March 2020, the Covid-19 caused a significant reduction in work. The company management asked the contractor to reduce the number of workers. They reduced the workers accordingly. The rest of the workers had stopped going to work.

Workers approached industrial court

The CITU union and 132 contractual workers had filed a complaint in the industrial court under the provisions of the Prevention of Unfair Labor Practices Act. The petition demanded to hire back workers and also to pay back pending wages. It was argued that the contractor was not responsible for paying the wages but the company itself was responsible for paying the wages and hiring the workers. The industrial court had passed an order to prosecute the case.

Decision of the Aurangabad Bench

The company management had challenged the order in the Aurangabad bench, which had ruled that the industrial court had no jurisdiction to prosecute petitions of contractual workers. Adv B R Kavere represented the company in the Supreme Court.