Judgment

KRISHNA IYER, J. :- If the jurisprudence of remedies were understood and applied from the perspective of social efficaciousness, the problem raised in this appeal would not have ended the erroneous way it did in the High Court. Judges must never forget that every law has a social purpose and engineering process without appreciating which justice to the law cannot be done. Here, the socio-legal situation we are faced with is a colliery, an explosive, an accident, luckily not lethal, caused by violation of a regulation and consequential cancellation of the certificate of the delinquent shot-firer, eventually quashed by the High Court for processual solecisms, by a writ of certiorari.

2. We may state at the outset that the learned Solicitor General agreed that the appellant, the Board of Mining Examination, would be satisfied if the law, wrongly laid down by the High Court, were set aside and declared aright and he was not insisting on the formal reversal of the order affecting the respondent (who is unrepresented before us). We proceed on that footing.

3. The few necessary facts may be narrated to bring up the legal issue in its real setting.

4. The respondent was a shot-firer in a colliery and being a risky, technical job, had to possess a certificate for it. He handed over an explosive to an unskilled hand who fired it, an accident occurred and one Bhadu, employed in the mine, was injured. The regional Inspector of Mines immediately enquired into the cause of the accident and found, on the respondents virtual admission, qualified by some prevarication, that the shots were fired not by himself but by a cutter, an unauthorised person for shot-firing to whom the respondent had wrongfully entrusted the work. Thereby he contravened the relevant Coal Mines Regulations. The Regional Inspector gave him an opportunity for explanation and, after considering the materials before him, forwarded the papers to the Chairman of the Board together with a recommendation for cancellation of the certificate under Regn. 26. The Board bestowed its judgment on the materials gathered by the Regional Inspector at the enquiry, which included the delinquents admission, and cancelled the shot-firing certificate. The said cancellation was shot down by a writ of the Court on the ground of violation of Regn. 26.

5. Was Regulation 26, in the context and setting of the Mines Act, misinterpreted by the High Court at all? This is the short question canvassed before us. We permit ourselves a few observations which serve as perspective-setters. Law is meant to serve the living and does not beat its abstract wings in the jural void. Its functional fulfilment as social engineering depends on its sensitized response to situation, subject-matter and the complex of realities which require ordered control. A holistic understanding is simple justice to the meaning of all legislations. Fragmentary grasp of rules can misfire or even backfire as in this case. It is a notorious fact that collieries - Indian collieries, both before and after nationalisation - are strategic sources of the nations fuel and, operationally, areas of tragic human hazards. We need coal, we want miners to bring it from the bowels of the earth. The dangerous technology is not yet so perfect in India as to ensure risk-free extraction. And, after many lives have been lost by the neglect of operatives or supervisors or supine bosses, follows the scenario of tears and torn-down home a little monetary compensation, a flutter in Parliament, a long-drawn-out Commission, a routine Report about lapses and recipes and the little mans life-or-death lot continuing to receive callous consideration at the hands of the law, law-maker, law-enforcer - this sombre colliery disaster sequence must educate and inform the jurisprudence of high-risk operations. In short, the Mines Act (and Regulations) must receive its judicial construction in the total setting, teleologically approached, not fragmentarily dissected.