BHARGAVA, J. - (1.) THE appellant, M. L. Bose & Co. (Private), Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as the company), chargesheeted ten of its workmen on 16 April, 1957 for various acts of misconduct and, holding that the charges were proved, passed orders of their dismissal on 18 April, 1957. Thereupon, the remaining workmen of the company went on strike on the same day. In connexion with that strike the company chargesheeted five workmen on 20 April, 1957 and, after enquiry into their individual cases, passed orders dismissing those five workmen on 22 April, 1957. Later on, chargesheets were served upon a batch of 32 other workmen on 25 April, 1957 in connexion with acts committed during the strike and orders were made dismissing them also. An industrial dispute in respect of the dismissal of these 47 workmen was raised by respondent 3, M. L. Bose & Co. Employees' Union (hereinafter referred to as the union), which was referred by the State Government to the third industrial tribunal, West Bengal, for adjudication. The tribunal made an award on 4 December, 1958 holding that the dismissal of the workmen was unjustified and directed their reinstatement. In addition, the tribunal ordered payment, by way of compensation, of one-third of the emoluments of the various workmen for the period between their dates of dismissal and dates of reinstatement. The appeal filed by special leave against that award in this Court was dismissed on 28 March, 1960, Thereafter, on or about 4 May, 1960, 44 out of the 47 workmen involved in the award filed separate application before the State Government for recovery of moneys payable to them under the award after computation of the amounts due to them. On these applications, the State Government, on 9 November, 1960, passed an order under S.33C(2) of the Industrial Disputes Act (hereinafter referred to as the Act) specifying the second labour court as the labour court for determination of the amount at which the benefits claimed should be computed. These orders were made on the applications which were sent to the labour court. The labour court took proceedings on those applications, computed the amounts due to the various workmen and gave its decision on 19 February, 1963. Thereupon, the company filed a petition under Art. 226 of the Constitution in the Calcutta High Court challenging this order of the labour court. A single Judge of the High Court dismissed that petition on 4 July, 1963, and the appeal to a Division Bench against that order of the single Judge was dismissed on 7 July, 1964. The company has now come up this Court in appeal by certificate granted by the High Court.Learned counsel appearing for the company urged only two points in support of this appeal. The first point was that the labour court had not jurisdiction to make the order under S.33C(2) of the Act on two alternative grounds, viz., (i) that the Court had not been properly specified by a notification generally empowering it to compute the benefits under S.33C(2) of the Act, and (ii) that the labour court was not competent to compute the amount in the absence of an application by the workmen presented to the labour court itself.
(2.) THE second point was that the union was not competent to represent the workmen in the proceedings under S.33C(2) of the Act while none of the workmen themselves appeared in support of their applications before the labour court. So far as the first point is concerned, it need not detain us, as a complete answer to the grounds raised is contained in the decision of this Court in Triegi Nath and others v. Indian Iron and Steel Company, Ltd. and others [1968 I L.L.J. 1]. This Court in that case held that, in West Bengal, in view of the language of S. 33(2) and rule 74 of the rules framed by the West Bengal State Government under S.38 of the Act, an application by a workmen under S. 33C(2) had to be presented to the Secretary to the State Government in the Department of Labour. On receipt of such an application, the Government had to specify the labour court in exercise of its powers under S. 33C(2) and thereupon, the labour court could competently deal with the application and then compute the amount due to the workman. The decision thus clearly laid down that it was competent for the State Government to specify a labour court of individual applications presented under S.33C(2) of the Act. It was further held that labour court specified had to proceed to compute the amount under S. 33C(2) on the basis of the application presented by the workmen to the Government. This clearly means that there was no legal requirement that an application for computation of the amount under S. 33C(2) was to be presented to the labour court apart from the application presented to the State Government. In fact, rule 74 was held to have the effect that, in West Bengal, whenever any workman wanted computation of amount due under S. 33C(2), the only procedure he could adopt was to send an application to the State Government and he could not present such an application to any labour court. In the circumstances, the grounds raised in support of the plea of want of jurisdiction of the labour court have no force at all.So far as the second point raised in this appeal is concerned, it was fully met by the provisions contained din S.33C(5) of the Act which envisages a joint application by a number of workmen claiming computation of the amount due to them under S.33C(2) of the Act. If a joint application can be presented, we can see no difficulty in holding that the union of which the workmen are members, would be fully competent to represent them in the proceedings before the labour court. The appeal fails and is dismissed with costs.;