Maintainability of the suit filed by dismissed employee.

V. Balasubrahmanyan, J.

1. The common question in all these second appeals is whether the suits out of which they arise, are maintainable. The Courts below held that they were maintainable. The correctness of their decision is disputed by the appellant who was the defendant in all the suits.

2. Four suits figure in this controversy. The plaintiff in each suit was an employee of a Cooperative Society called the Madurai District Co-operative Supply and Marketing Society Limited. Each of them was in charge of a godown of the Society storing foodgrains. On the ground that there were shortages in the stock, each of the godown keepers was dismissed by the Society after a domestic inquiry. Each of them filed a suit against the Society for a declaration that his dismissal was wrongful.

3. The Society resisted the suits on the ground, among others that they were not maintainable. The Courts below negatived this contention, proceeded on the merits of the case and decreed the suits as prayed for.

4. The issue as to maintainability was rested before the lower Courts under two different sets of statutory provisions. One was under Section 73 read with Section 100 of the Tamil Nadu Co-operative Societies Act, 1961. The other was under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947. No argument, however, was addressed before me by the Society's learned Counsel on the basis of Section 73 of the Tamil Nadu Cooperative Societies Act, I96I, for disputes arising out of disciplinary action taken by a Society or its Committee against a paid servant of Society stands specifically excluded from the class of disputes which are covered by the special procedure drawn up under Section 73 of the Act.

5. Learned Counsel for the Society accordingly pressed for my consideration the other objection to the maintainability of the suits namely -that the Industrial Disputes Act provides for a comprehensive procedure and an adequate remedy for dismissed workmen, and thereby the jurisdiction of Civil Courts is impliedly barred in such matters. He relied on two decisions of learned Single Judges of this Court in Krishnan v. E.I.D. & Section Factories and Madura Mills Co. Limited v. Guruvammal and Anr. (1967) 2 Lab. L.J. 397 Learned Counsel pointed out that these decisions were cited with approval by the Supreme Court in Premier Automobiles Limited v. K.S. Wadke (1975) 48 F.J.R. 252 Learned Counsel further pointed out that in a more recent decision in Bangalore Water Supply v. A. Rajappa the Supreme Court had laid down that Co-operative Societies carrying on any industry, cannot fall outside the ambit of Section 2(j) of the Industrial Disputes Act. Learned Counsel accordingly submitted that the courts below were in error in entertaining the suits filed by the dismissed employees and in proceeding to adjudicate them on merits.

6. I accept the submission that the appellant Society in this case might well be brought within the ambit of the Industrial Disputes Act as carrying on an 'industry' which includes any business, trade, undertaking, manufacture or calling of employers. Maintaining a godown for storage and distribution can be treated either as a business or as a trade or at any rate as an undertaking. I have also no hesitation in holding that a dispute concerning the employment or the non-employment of a workman as between the co-operative society and its workmen must be regarded as an industrial disputer within the meaning of Section 2-A of the Industrial Disputes Act, whether the non-employment can be treated as a discharge, dismissal, retrenchment or termination of employment.

7. Granting that the appellant co-operative society maintaining a godown and engaging godown keepers is an industry and granting that the dismissal of the godown keepers raises an industrial dispute, still the question is whether the suits filed by the present plaintiffs against their dismissal by the Society are not maintainable. For an answer to this question we will have to go to the decision of th