The services rendered by the employees of an apartment owners' association to the apartment owners constitute an 'industry' and the employees are 'workmen' within the meaning of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947.

( 1 ) THE petitioner in the instant application under Article 226 of the Constitution of India challenges an order of reference being Annexure 'p' to the petition referring an industrial dispute to the Presiding Officer, 3rd Industrial Tribunal, West Bengal being respondent No. 11. The case was hotly contested.

( 2 ) THE petitioner is an association of apartment owners under the specific name and style of "hanshree Apartment Owners' Association" having its registered office at 6, Hastings Park Road, Alipore, formed in accordance with the provision of the West Bengal Apartment Ownership Act, 1972, hereinafter referred to as the 1972 Act. The respondent No. 1 is the association of the employees rendering services to the petitioner and not to any individual member of the petitioner. The respondendts Nos. 2 to 7 are also the employees of the petitoner whose services have been terminated by the petitioner giving rise to the present case.

( 3 ) IT is not necessary to deal with either the past history of these apartments or with the previous litigations fought by the parties for the establishment of their respective rights.

( 4 ) IT is sufficient to note that Ashok Marketing Ltd. , a Public Limited Company owned the apartments in question and got the said apartments declared under Section 2 of the 1972 Act read with Sub-section (1) of Section 10 of the said Act. This incidentally means that the apartments were made for residential purposes.

( 5 ) IT is an admitted position that the members of the respondent no. 1 and the respondent Nos. 2 to 7 are currently employed by the petitioner and are being paid by the petitioner for rendering services to the petitioner. The question as to whether the said respondents were appointed afresh by the petitioner or whether the petitioner inherited this burdensome obligation from Ashok Marketing Ltd. is totally irrelevant for a decision on the point in issue.

( 6 ) THE admitted position is that there was some allegation of an incident of assault made on two members of the Board of Managers of the Petitioner No. 1 by the respondent Nos. 2 to 7 which resulted in initiation of criminal proceedings and culminated in dismissal of the said respondent Nos. 2 to 7.

( 7 ) THE respondent No. 1 initiated conciliation proceedings before the appropriate authority which, as usual, failed and a failure report was submitted to the appropriate Government under Section 12 (4) of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, hereinafter referred to as the 1947 Act. The appropriate authority in its turn referred the said dispute to the respondent No. 11 by the order impugned in this application being Annexure 'p' thereof.

( 8 ) THE main contention of the writ petitioner is that the members of the respondent No. 1 along with the respondent Nos. 2 to 7 fall in the domain of 'domestic servant' and such 'domestic servant and the like' should be excluded from the definition of industry and workmen within the meaning of Section 2 (j) and 2 (s) of the 1947 Act respectively.

( 9 ) MR. Sengupta, in trying to elaborate this proposition, submitted that if the entire building is owned and occupied by a very rich single owner who chooses to appoint a host of servants and aids for purposes of maintaining and effecting different repair works, then certainly such employment will not come under the purview of an industry. On the same analogy, he urges that if simply the ownership is divided into smaller fractions, the nature of the work rendered by such multiple servants do not undergo any change. Mr. Sengupta contends that it is only the nature of the service and not the person or persons to whom such services are rendered should be the criteria to judge as to whether a particular activity comes within the mischief of the definition of industry within the meaning of Section 2 (j ). Plurality of ownership cannot change the nature and character of the services rendered and should not be allowed to convert an activity