The main legal point established in the judgment is the requirement of community of interest and the timing of its existence in determining whether a dispute is an industrial dispute under the Industrial Disputes Act.

M.A. Ansari, C.J.

1. The writ petitioner in O. P. No. 296/59 is the appellant, and seeks to set aside the award by the Industrial Tribunal, Trivandrum in Dispute No. 1/57. The aforesaid prayer has been rejected by a learned Judge of this Court; hence this appeal.

2. The facts leading to the petition, can be shortly stated: The appellant, who is a sub-agent of the Standard Vaccum Oil Company in Quilon, had dismissed three workmen on October 3, 1956. The employees got themselves subsequently enrolled as members of the "Quilon Commercial Staff Association", and on October 19, 1956, a dispute between the employer and the aforesaid association developed, in which the Government had referred two questions to the Tribunal, by order of January 8, 1957. Before the Tribunal, the dismissed workers, on January 28, 1957 filed a petition, praying that in the proceedings they may be allowed to be represented by the Quilon Commercial and Industrial Employees' Association, because they had, after the reference, resigned the membership of the former and had joined the latter association. On February 16, 1957, the Secretary of the Quilon Industrial Commercial Staff Association also submitted to the Tribunal a petition that his association did not desire to prosecute the claim, and that the Tribunal be pleased to drop all the proceedings. The Tribunal allowed the three workmen's prayer, for permitting the Quilon Commercial and Industrial Employees' Association to represent them; and, nearly two years later, i. e., on February 13, 1959, the award in the case was given.

3. The appellant has challenged the legality of the award on several grounds, and one of these is that the dispute could not be referred to the Tribunal as the quarrel was between individual workers and their employer, there being no Union, of which the dismissed employees were members at the time they were dismissed. The appellant's learned counsel had argued that any subsequent sponsoring by the Union, whose members, the dismissed workers had later become, would not convert the dispute initially outside the Industrial Disputes Act, hereinafter referred to as the Act, into one covered by the Act. The learned Judge, who heard the writ petition, has rejected the argument on the ground that, if the dispute be between the Union and the employer, that would amount to an industrial dispute, notwithstanding its being at its initial stage a quarrel between individual workers and their employer.

4. The appellant's advocate has taken two grounds for this appeal being allowed, which are that:--

(1) Only disputes between the employer and the Union of those employed in similar or allied trade, of which the aggrieved workmen be members at the time the cause for the dispute arose, would be covered by the Act,

(2) Any subsequent membership of the aggrieved workmen of a Union, would not make the Union a party to the dispute for the purpose of the quarrel being referred and the award being made; as the Act, by subsequent events, could not be made to extend to what be beyond its operation when the event, giving rise to the dispute occurred.

5. It is clear that every controversy between the employer and an association of persons sponsoring the cause of the aggrieved workmen, would not amount to industrial dispute, however wide the language of S.2(k) may be. Thus in Newspapers Ltd. v. State Industrial Tribunal (AIR 1957 SC 532) a lino typist was dismissed from service by the appellant company on allegations of incompetence, and the U. P. Working Journalists' Union, that had no connection, took up the matter. The typist's case was not taken up by any Union of his coworkers, nor by any of the Unions of workmen employed in similar or allied trades. On the journalists taking up the case, the U. P. Government made a reference to the Industrial Tribunal, and Kapur J. allowing the appeal, has observed at p. 540 as follows:--

"The words used in the first part of the notification show that the Government was la