Judgment

KRISHNA IYER, J. :- Three seminal issues arise in this little lis harbouring larger principles. We may state them, each with a quote to drive home the social stakes, and then proceed to the pedestrian factual-legal narrative and discussion.

They (corporations) cannot commit treason, nor be outlawed, nor excommunicated, for they have no souls".

(Edward Coke, Suttons Hospital Case)

2. A legal power, which projects an awesome portent has been sprung upon the court by the defending respondent - The Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited Vide Certificate of Incorporation dated 1-8-1977 (the Corporation, for short - as to whether a writ will issue under Article 32 of the Constitution against a government company, belonging, as it does, to an increasing tribe of soulless ubiquity and claiming, as it does, to constitutional immunity. This is the first issue to which we will address ourselves.

3. Jawaharlal Nehru warned the Constituent Assembly about the problem of poverty and social change :

The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity. The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but as long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.

4. The second question which claims our attention turns on the petitioners plea of alleged stultification of Article 41 by the State itself re-incarnating as a government company, by defending the paring down the pension of the petitioner to a pathetic pittance thus sterilising a directive principle to a decorative paper.

5. Law cannot stand aside from the social changes around it.

(Justice Brennan in Roth v. United States (1957) 354 US 476)

6. The third problem, not humdrum but heuristic, turns on the construction of the relevant legislations and regulations covered by the writ petition, remembering the social dynamics of the law of statutory interpretation.

7. This writ petition under Article 32 relates to a poor employees small pension on retirement and the legality of the deductions effected by the employer which make the net sum payable traumatically trivial (Rs. 40/-). A principle of wider application is involved beyond the individuals pensionary fate.

8. The petitioner was employed as a clerk in the Burmah Shell Oil Storage Limited, (Burmah Shell, for short) and retired betimes (at 50) after qualifying for a pension, on April 1, 1973. He was also covered by a scheme under the Employees Provident Funds, and Family Pension Fund Act, 1952 (for short, the PF Act). The employer undertaking was statutorily taken over by force of The Burmah Shell (Acquisition of Undertakings in India) Act, 1976 (hereinafter called the Act). Therefore, the Central Government, acting under the statute, took necessary steps for the vesting of the Undertaking in the second respondent, the Corporation and became the statutory successor of the petitioners employer. His pensionary rights, such as he had, therefore, became claimable from the second respondent. What was the quantum? Was any cut illegally effected by Burmah Shell and continued by respondent 2? Could a writ be issued against the second respondent in respect of the cut? These are the questions argued before us, The petitioner-pensioner, being too poor, Shri Parekh, assigned by the Legal Aid Society, appeared promptly and argued passionately. At a re-hearing the petitioner preferred to make a few brief supplementary submissions on his own.

9. The pensionary provision for the Burmah Shell employees depended on the terms of a Trust Deed of 1950 under which a Pension Fund was set up and regulations were made for its administration. Regulations 13 and 15 entitled the petitioner to pension and contained the formula for quantification, Regulation 13 has a significant clause: "less the authorised deductions specified in Reg. 16 namely................ The bone of contention be