# THE BALLARPUR COLLIERIES CO v. STATE INDUSTRIAL COURT, NAGPUR AND OTHERS

- **Citation:** [1966] 2 S.C.R. 589
- **Court:** Supreme Court of India
- **Decided:** 1965-11-15
- **Bench:** P. B. Gajendragadkar, K. N. Wanchoo, v. RAMASWAMI, P. Satyanarayana Raju
- **Source:** https://unisonlegal.in/judgment/supreme-court-of-india/the-ballarpur-collieries-co-v-state-industrial-court-nagpur-and-others-3719
- **Pages:** 7

## Headnote

Central Provinces and _Bera'r lndustrial Disputes
Settle111ent
Act,
No. 23 of 1947, s. 1(3), Notification under-Certain industries exempted
from operation of provisions of the flct-Head Office of n1ining company whether exe1npted.
The appellant was a mining company with its head office at Nagpur.
Tue business of the head office was to look after the sale of coal extracted from the collieries. An employee of· the company working in the
head office made applications under s. 16 of the Central Provinces and
Berar Industrial Disputes Settlement Act, 1947, to the A5Sistant Commissioner of Labour, Nagpur.
The company objected that
by
virtue
of
the notification under s. 1 (3) of the Act the mining industry had been
exempted from the operation of the Act including s. 16 and therefore the
Assistant Labour Commissioner
had no
jurisdiction.
The
authorities
under the Act as well as the High Court under Arts. 226 and 227,
reje<;ted the company's contention.
The High Court took the view that
what was exempted by the third item in the notification was not the
head office of a mine but the mine itself and consequently the en1ployees
of the head office wern governed by the Act.
The company appealed
to the Supreme Court by special leave.
HELD : The notification in question said that the Act would come
into force on 21st Nuvember, 1947 .. in a11 the industries except the following" and then went on to name four industries, the third one being
'Mines'.
After the word 'fol1o\ving' the. word industries must be read
and thus read the notification in effect sa:d the
Act v..'ould
come into
effect on the given date in all industries except the industries mentioned.
Therefore it was not only mines but the mining industry itself that \Vas
exempted from the operation of the Act. [593 A-B, D EJ
lf the notification exempted the industry of mines or the mining industry it could not be said that it merely exempted that part of the said
industry of mines or mining industry \Vhich consisted of raising coaL at the
colliery and did not include the head office thereof.
As the. High Court
said, the head office was part of the integrated activity of the company.
Therefore when the: mining industry \Vas exempteJ from the operat:on of
the Act the ex~mP'tion applied not only to that part of the industry which
consi•ted of raising coal at the colliery but also to that pact of it which
consisted in the sale of coal and its supply to the customers and would
thus include the head office also. [593 E-G]
Mis. Godavari Sugar Mills Ltd. v. D. K. Worlikar, A.LR. 1960
S.C. 842 and Mis. Serajuddin and Co. v. Their Workmen, [1962] 3. Supp.
S.C.R. 934. distinguished.
On the above view the Assistant Labour Commissioner had no jurisH
diction under the Act to deal with the matter in question. [595 EJ
CrvrL APPELLATE JURISDICTION :
Civil Appeal No. 30 of
1965.
590
SUPREME
COURT
REPORTS
[1966] 2 S.C.R.
Appeal by special leave from the judgment and order dated
A
. September 8, 1962 of the Bombay High Court in Special Civil
Application No. 364 of 1961.
C. B. Agarwala, 0. P. Malhotra, J. B. Dadachanji, 0. C.
Mathur and Ra:vinder Narain, for the appellant.
G. L. Sangli and A. G. Ratnaparkhi, for respondent No. 3.
B

## Text

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589
THE BALLARPUR COLLIERIES CO.
v.
STATE INDUSTRIAL COURT, NAGPUR AND OTHERS
November 15, 1965
[P. B. GAJENDRAGADKAR, C.J., K. N. WANCHOO, v. RAMASWAMI
AND P. SATYANARAYANA RAJU, JJ.)
Central Provinces and _Bera'r lndustrial Disputes
Settle111ent
Act,
No. 23 of 1947, s. 1(3), Notification under-Certain industries exempted
from operation of provisions of the flct-Head Office of n1ining company whether exe1npted.
The appellant was a mining company with its head office at Nagpur.
Tue business of the head office was to look after the sale of coal extracted from the collieries. An employee of· the company working in the
head office made applications under s. 16 of the Central Provinces and
Berar Industrial Disputes Settlement Act, 1947, to the A5Sistant Commissioner of Labour, Nagpur.
The company objected that
by
virtue
of
the notification under s. 1 (3) of the Act the mining industry had been
exempted from the operation of the Act including s. 16 and therefore the
Assistant Labour Commissioner
had no
jurisdiction.
The
authorities
under the Act as well as the High Court under Arts. 226 and 227,
reje<;ted the company's contention.
The High Court took the view that
what was exempted by the third item in the notification was not the
head office of a mine but the mine itself and consequently the en1ployees
of the head office wern governed by the Act.
The company appealed
to the Supreme Court by special leave.
HELD : The notification in question said that the Act would come
into force on 21st Nuvember, 1947 .. in a11 the industries except the following" and then went on to name four industries, the third one being
'Mines'.
After the word 'fol1o\ving' the. word industries must be read
and thus read the notification in effect sa:d the
Act v..'ould
come into
effect on the given date in all industries except the industries mentioned.
Therefore it was not only mines but the mining industry itself that \Vas
exempted from the operation of the Act. [593 A-B, D EJ
lf the notification exempted the industry of mines or the mining industry it could not be said that it merely exempted that part of the said
industry of mines or mining industry \Vhich consisted of raising coaL at the
colliery and did not include the head office thereof.
As the. High Court
said, the head office was part of the integrated activity of the company.
Therefore when the: mining industry \Vas exempteJ from the operat:on of
the Act the ex~mP'tion applied not only to that part of the industry which
consi•ted of raising coal at the colliery but also to that pact of it which
consisted in the sale of coal and its supply to the customers and would
thus include the head office also. [593 E-G]
Mis. Godavari Sugar Mills Ltd. v. D. K. Worlikar, A.LR. 1960
S.C. 842 and Mis. Serajuddin and Co. v. Their Workmen, [1962] 3. Supp.
S.C.R. 934. distinguished.
On the above view the Assistant Labour Commissioner had no jurisH
diction under the Act to deal with the matter in question. [595 EJ
CrvrL APPELLATE JURISDICTION :
Civil Appeal No. 30 of
1965.
590
SUPREME
COURT
REPORTS
[1966] 2 S.C.R.
Appeal by special leave from the judgment and order dated
A
. September 8, 1962 of the Bombay High Court in Special Civil
Application No. 364 of 1961.
C. B. Agarwala, 0. P. Malhotra, J. B. Dadachanji, 0. C.
Mathur and Ra:vinder Narain, for the appellant.
G. L. Sangli and A. G. Ratnaparkhi, for respondent No. 3.
B
The Judgment of the Court was delivered by
Wanchoo, J. The only question raised in this appeal by special
leave is whether the Central Provinces and Berar Industrial Disputes Settlement Act, No. XXIII of 1947, (hereinafter referred
to as the Act) is applicable to the head office of the appellant
C
which is known as the Ballarpur Collieries Company. The head
office is situate in Nagpur and has a staff of about 35 employees.
The business of the head office is to look after the sale of coal
extracted from the collieries.
The question arises in this way.
Bapat respondent was a
D
stenographer working in the head office at Nagpur.
He was dismissed from service on July 31, 1959. It is not necessary for
present purposes to go into the facts and circumstances leading
to this dismissal.
Suffice it to mention that an enquiry was said
to have been held before the dismissal order was passed. While
this enquiry was pending Bapat made an application under s. 16
of the Act before the Assistant Commissioner of Labour, Nagpur,
on July 21, 1959.
In this application Bapat prayed that the
employer should be ordered to pay him wages from the date of
dismissal, discharge or removal to the date of the order under
s. 16 in addition to a sum not exceeding Rs.
2,500 by way
E
of compensation. It was also prayed that the employer should
F
be ordered to pay retrenchment compensation under Chap. V-A of
the Industrial Disputes Act, No. 14 of 1947 (hereinafter referred
to as the Central Act No. 14). Though this application was .
headed as application for reinstatement and compensation etc.,
there was no prayer for reinstatement and Bapat was only content
to ask for a sum of Rs. 2,500 by way of compensation. While
this application was pending, Bapat was, as already indicated,
dismissed on July 31, 1959. Thereupon he. filed another application under s. 16 of the Act on August 19, 1959. In this application he prayed for reinstatement or in the alternative for full compensation amounting to Rs. 2,500 and such other relief as he
might be entitled to.
The main contention of the appellant before the Assistant
Commissioner of Labour was that the Act did not apply to it and
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BALLARPUR COLLIERIES v. INDUSTRIAL COURT (Wanchoo, J.)
59I
A therefore the Assistant Commissioner had no jurisdiction to proceed in the matter.
The Assistant Commissioner held that the
Act applied and he had jurisdiction to deal with the matter. He
therefore gave relief by setting aside the order of dismissal and
directing that the employer should pay Rs. 2,000 as
compensation and wages from the date of dismissal to the date of his
B order.
This order was taken in revision by the appellant to the State
Industrial Court at Nagpur, and the main contention again urged
there was that the Act did not apply to the appellant and the
Assistant Commissioner had no jurisdiction to deal with the matter.
c This contention did not find favour with the State Industrial Court
with the result that the revision was dismissed.
The appellant then filed a petition under Articles 226 and
227 of the Constitution in the High Court, and the same contention was raised that the Act did not apply and the Assistant Commissioner had no jurisdiction in the matter.
The High Court held
D on a construction of the relevant provisions of the Act and the
notification issued thereunder that the Act was applicable and in
conse[juence the writ petition was dismissed.
The High Court
having refused to give leave to appeal to this Court, the appellant
obtained special leave from this Court; and that is how the matter
has come before us.
E
Section 1 of the Act came into force on June 2, 1947, and
as provided by s. 1 (3) thereof, the rest of the Act came into
force on November 21, 1947, on a notification being issued by the
State Government in that behalf.
Section 1 ( 3) lays down that
"the State Government may by notification bring the remaining
F sections or any of them into force in such area or industry and
on such date as may be specified in the notification."
By virtue
of the power conferred on the State Government by s. 1 (3) the
following notification was issued on November 20, 1947 :-
G
H
"In exercise of the powers conferred by sub-section
( 3) of section 1, of the Central Provinces and Berar
Industrial Disputes Settlement Act, 1947, the Provincial Government are pleased to direct that sections 2
to 61 of the said Act shall come into force on the 21st
November 194 7, in all the industries except the following namely :-
(i) Textile industry.
(ii) Employment in any industry carried on by or
unc!er the authority of the Central Government
592
SUPREME
COURT
REPORTS
[ 1966 J 2 S.C.R.
by an Indian State Railway or by a Railway
Company operating an Indian State Railway.
(iii) Mines.
(iv) Saw Mills."
It is the interpretation of this notification which calls for consideration in the present appeal.
The appellant's contention is that
by this notification, the Act was applied as from November 21,
194 7, to all industries except four specified therein; and of these,
the third was mines. It is urged on behalf of. the appellant that
when the notification provided for the application of the Act to
all industries except four which were excepted it was exempting
the mining industry by the third item of exemption. The mining
industry according to the appellant wi II include the head office,
for as the High Court says, "it is not disputed that the Head Office
is a part of integrated activity of the petitioner-company which
carries on the business of producing coal and its sale and supply
to its various customers."
The argument is that the head office
at Nagpur being a part of integrated activity of carrying on the
mining industry by the appellant, the head office was
equally
exempt from the application of the Act by the notification in
question. If that is so, no application under s. I 6 of the Act
could be made by Bapat to the Assistant Commissioner of Labour.
It is also pointed out on behalf of the appellant that Bapat would
have a remedy under the Central Act No. 14 of 1947 which came
into force earlier than the Act from April 1, 1947, though the
procedure for obtaining relief under that Act would be different
namely, through a reference by the appropriate government under
s. IO of the Central Act No. 14 of 1947.
The High Court however held that what was exempted by the
third item in the notification was not the head office of a mine
but the mine itself and no more.
Consequently the employees
at the head office of the appellant were governed by the Act. This
view of the High Court is being supported by the respondents
before us, au.d it is urged that the notification uses the word
"mines" and not the words "mining industry" in the exemption
part and therefore what was exempted from the Act were merely
the coal mines where mining operations were carried on and not
the mining industry, which may include the head office also.
We are of the opinion that the contention raised on behalf
of the appellant is correct, and what the notification exempted
was the mining industry from the operation of the Act. In this
connection we may refer to the following words in the notification
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BALLARPUR COLLIERIES v. INDUSTRIAL COURT (Wanchoo, !.)
59:;
A namely, "the said Act shall come into force on the 21st November, 1947 in all the industries except the following".
Grammatically the word "industries" must be understood as following the
word "following" appearing in the above sentence. Thus what the
notification in effect said was that the said Act shall come into
force on 21st November 1947 in all the industries except the
B following industries.
It has however, been urged that if that was
so, it was not necessary, for example, in the first item of examption to use the words "textile industry", and it would have been
sufficient to use the word "textile".
All that we need say is that
the notification is not a work of art and has to be read in its
tenor without trying to find out why the word "industry" was used
C in the first item and why the same was not used in the third and
fourth items, which deal with "Mines" and "Saw Mills" respectively.
Grammatically, however, this part of the notification
clearly says that the Act would apply to all industries except the
four industries specified therein for the purpose
of exemption.
These four exemptions include the industry of mines. We see no
D difference between the words "mining industry" and "industry of
mines", for they mean the same thing, namely, the industry which
is concerned with mines.
If therefore the notification exempted
the industry of mines or the mining industry it cannot be said
that it merely exempted that part of the said industry of mines
E or mining industry which consisted of rai-sing coal at the colliery
and did not include the head office thereof.
As we have already
indicated, the High Court has said that "it is not disputed that
the head office is a part of integrated activity of the petitionercompany which carries on the business of producing coal and its
sale and supply to its various customers".
Therefore, when the
F
industry of mines or the mining industry was exempted from the
operation of the Act, the exemption applied not only to that part
of the industry which consisted of raising coal at the colliery but
also to that part of it which consisted in the sale of coal and
its supply to customers and would thus include the head office
also.
As we read the notification we see no escape from the
G conclusion that what was exempted from the application of the
Act was the industry of mines or the mining industry and that
would include not only the colliery where the coal was raised but
also the head office from where the coal was sold and distributed
to the customers.
It now remains to refer to two cases on which reliance was
H
placed by the High Court.
The first is Messrs. Godavari Sugar
Mills Ltd. v. D. K. Worlikar('). In that case this Court held
(I) [1960] 3 S.C.R. 305.
594
SUPREME
COURT
REPORTS
[1966] 2 S.C.R.
that the notification under challenge there did not apply to the
head office of the Sugar Mills. That decision turned on the actual
words of the notification and is of no assistance to the respondents.
It was pointed out in that case that if the notification had
merely used the words "sugar industry" it would have been 'possible to construe that expression in a broader sense having regard
to the wide definition of the word "industry"; but the notification
had deliberately adopted a different phraseology and had brought
within its purview not the sugar industry as such but the manufacture of sugar and its by-products. The words of the notification
in that case were "the said Act shall apply to the following industry, namely, the manufacture of sugar and its by-products".
Therefore on the words of the notification in that case, the wide
implication which might have arisen if the notification had merely
stated that the Act applied to the sugar industry was cut down
by the specific words in the notification, namely, manufacture of
mgar and its by-products, which would clearly apply only to a
part of sugar industry which dealt with the manufacture of sugar
and the by-products and would not apply to the head office which
did not deal with the actual manufacture but dealt with the consequent steps following on the manufacture vi{., sale and distribution to customers.
In the present case the notification clearly
applied to the industry of mines which in our ,£pinion is nothing
different from mining industry and must therefore take in the
entire industry including the raising of coal from the colliery as
well as its distribution, sale and supply to the customers.
That
case therefore is of no help to the respondents.
The next case to which reference is made is Messrs. Serajuddin
and Company v. Their workmen('). In that case a dispute relating to the head office of a mining company was referred by the
Government of West Bengal to the industrial tribunal and a question arose whether the Government of West Bengal was the appropriate government within the meaning of s. 2(a) (i) of the Centr:1l
Act No. 14 of 1947. It was held that the West Bengal Government was the appropriate government and the decision turned on
the interpretation of s. 2(a)(i) of the said Act whiCh defined
"appropriate government".
The words which came in for interpretation were "in relation to an industrial dispute concerning a
banking or an insurance company, a mine, an oil-field, or a major
port". It was held that the word "mine" as used in s. 2(a)(i)
-0f the Central Act No. 14 of 1947 referred to a mine as defi.ned
in the Mines Act and that a dispute with reference to the head
office of a mine was not a dispute concerning the mine which
(1)
[!%2] 3 Supp. S.C.R. 934.
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BALLARPUR COLLIERIES v. INDUSTRIAL COURT (Wanchoo, !.) 595
A •must mean a mine as defined in the Mines Act. That case also
is of no help to the respondents for here we are not concerned
with the word "mine"; what we are concerned with is whether the
exem_ption clause in the notification which exempts the industry
of mines or the mining industry will take in the head office. The
words therefore in the present notilication are different and the
B decision in tltat case is of no help. We have no doubt that when
the notification exempts the industry of mines or the mining
industry which in our opinion mean the same thing, the exemption includes the head office also which must be treated as an
integral part of the mining industry, for ii deals with the subsequent steps taken to dispose of, in this case, the coal raised from
C the colliery.
Learned counsel for the appellant wished to argue that the
head office carried on other activities besides the activity of sellin~
coal raised from the colliery. We have not allowed him to raise
this point for this was not raised in the High Court. We have
D already referred to the observation of the High Court that ii
was not disputed that the head office was a part of integrated
activity of the appellant-company which carried on the business of
producing coal and its sale and supply to its various customers.
It was not even the case of the respondents in reply in the High
Court that the head office carried on other activities besides the
E sale and distribution of the coal produced in the colliery.
In the view we have taken of the notification and its interpretation we are of opinion that the Assistant Commissioner of
Labonr had no jurisdiction under the Act to deal with the application of Bapat.
In this view of the matter the appeal must be
F allowed and the orders of the High Court, the State Industrial
O~urt and the Assistant Commissioner of Labour are set aside.
We therefore direct the dismissal of the application under s. 16
of the Act.
In the circumstances we pass no order as to costs.
Appeal allowed.