The petitioner - trade union by this petition challenges the process initiated for verification of the membership of the trade union operating in the establishment to find out which trade union commands support of the majority of the workers. The case of the petitioner - trade union in nutshell is that they had given their consent for carrying out process of verification of membership of trade union by secret ballot pursuant to the judgment of this Court in Writ Petition No. 1785 of 1997 dated 5th May, 1998 and as now by its judgment in the case Air India Employees Guild v. Air India Ltd., 2007 (1) Mh. LJ 659, the Full Bench of this Court has overruled the judgment of the Division Bench in Writ Petition No. 1785 of 1997 dated 5th May, 1998, now the process of verification of membership of the trade union by secret ballot system cannot be carried out. In our opinion, the petition cannot be entertained for various reasons. Firstly, the case of the petitioner that it had given its consent for verification of the membership of the trade union by system of secret ballot after the order dated 5th May, 1998 was made in Writ Petition No. 1785 of 1997, is false. Perusal of the minutes of the meeting held with the Presiding and the General Secretaries of the recognised unions in Oil and Natural Gas Corporation dated 13th July, 1996 shows that the President of the petitioner Association participated in that meeting. The relevant portion of the resolution No. 2 reads thus :-

The method of recognition by secret ballot was agreed upon by all the recognized unions except representative of ONGC employees union, Tripura who were of the view that it may not be possible to conduct free and fair elections in view of the prevailing law and order situation at Agartala.

Then the resolution recites thus :-

After detailed discussions, it was agreed as under :

(i) ........

(ii) Verification of Trade unions would be done through secret ballot in accordance with the procedure issued by the Ministry of Labour, Government of India.

It is, thus, clear from this document that the consent was given by the petitioner - trade union for secret ballot system even before the Writ Petition No. 1785 of 1997 was filed in this Court. Perusal of the judgment in writ petition No. 1785 of 1997 shows that the petition was filed not by the petitioner - Union but by the Respondent No. 10 Trade Union and the Petitioner - Trade Union was Respondent No. 6 in that petition claiming that the process of verification of the membership of the trade union should be decided by system of secret ballot. Strangely it appears that though the petitioner - trade union had given its consent in the year 1996 as it is evident from the Resolution quoted above, the petition was opposed by the petitioner - Union. The Division Bench, however, relying on the judgment of the Supreme Court in the case Food Corporation of India Staff Union v. Food Corporation of India & Ors., AIR 1995 S.C. 1344, upheld the contention of the trade Union which was petitioners in the petition and directed that the process of verification of membership should be carried out by the system of secret ballot. It is pertinent to be noted here that Oil & Natural Gas Commission had already adopted as a matter of policy the system of verification of membership of trade union by secret ballot. Perusal of the manual for recognition of trade union placed before us shows that there is clear statement made to that effect which reads as under :-

The adoption of the process of secret ballot, for ascertaining the majority character of a Union before conferring/changing the recognition to a Union is now the policy of ONGC. The guidelines issued by the Corporate IR in this connection in December, 1998, have also been incorporated in this chapter.

It is, thus, clear that the system of secret ballot has been adopted by ONGC as a matter of policy. In the petition, there is no challenge to the policy. In our opinion, unless the policy ad