BANGALORE WATER SUPPLY AND SEWERAGE BOARD Vs. A.RAJAPPA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The rather zigzag course of the landmark cases and the tangled web of judicial thought have perplexed one branch of Industrial Law. resulting from obfuscation of the basic concept of 'industry' under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 (for Short, the Act). This bizarre situation, 30 years after the Act was passed and industrialization had advanced on a national scale, could apt be allowed to continue longer. So, the urgent need for an authoritative resolution of this confused position which has survived - indeed) has been accentuated by - the judgment of the six-member Beach in Safdarjung, if we may say so with deep respect, has led to a reference to a larger bench of this die-hard dispute as to what an 'industry' under S. 2 (j) means.

(2.) Legalese and logomachy have the genius to inject mystique into com- mon words, alienating the laity in effect from the rule of Jaw. What is the common worker or ordinary employer to do if he is bewildered by a definitional dilemma and is unsure whether his enterprise - say, a hospital, a university, a library, a service club, a local body, a research institute, a panjarapole, a chamber of commerce, a Gandhi Ashram - is an industry at all Natural meaning is nervous of acceptance in court, where the meaning of meanings is lost in uncertain erudition and cases have even cancelled each other out while reading meaning :

(3.) Law, especially industrial law, which regulates the rights and remedies of the working class, unfamiliar with the sophistications of definitions and shower of decisions, unable to secure expert legal opinion, what with poverty pricing them out of the justice market and denying them the staying power to withstand the multi-decked litigative process, de facto denies social justice if legal drafting is vagarious, definitions indefinite and court rulings contradictory. Is it possible, that the legislative chambers are too pre-occupied with other pressing business to listen to court signals calling for clarification of ambiguous clauses A careful, prompt amendment of S. 2 (j) would have pre-empted this docket explosion before tribunals and courts. This court, perhaps more than the legislative and executive branches, is deeply concerned with law's delays and to devise a prompt delivery system of social justice.