The Tribunal has jurisdiction to award wages for a period beyond six months prior to the presentation of the claim if the applicant satisfies the requirements of the second proviso to Section 20(2) of the Minimum Wages Act.

ORDER : - This is an application under Art.226 of the Constitution for the issue of a writ of certiorari to set aside the order of the Industrial Tribunal, Madurai, dated 11-11-1953 passed under S.20, Minimum Wages Act, (Act XI of 1948), hereinafter referred to as the Act.

2. The petitioner carries on a public motor transport service. Employment in public motor transport is item 11 of Part 1 of the schedule to the Act. The tribunal found that the first respondent was in the employ of the petitioner as a bus conductor between 7-11-1951 and 4-3-1953. The notification prescribed by S.3(1)(a)(i) and S.5 of the Act was issued by the Government of Madras, the appropriate Government, on 28-3-1952, fixing the minimum wages payable under the Act to a bus conductor at Rs.30 plus dearness allowance of Rs.10 a month.

3. On 30-6-1953, the first respondent applied to the Industrial Tribunal as the authority appointed under S.20, Clause (1) of the Act claiming in all a sum of Rs.3168/-, claimed Rs.288 as the balance of wages due to him under the Act and he claimed ten times that amount, Rs.2880 as compensation for the non-payment of the wages. The Tribunal dismissed his claim for compensation.

It held that the first respondent was entitled to a sum of Rs.306-4-0 which, the Tribunal held, constituted the difference between the minimum wages payable to the first respondent between 1-4-1952 and 4-3-1953 at Rs.49 a month, and the amount actually paid to him during that period by the petitioner as wages.

4. The petitioner contended that the Tribunal had no jurisdiction to award the first respondent anything more than what had accrued to him as minimum wages during the six months that preceded the presentation of the claim on 30-6-1953. Since the first respondent admittedly left the services of the petitioner on 4-3-1953 the claim, it was contended, should have been limited to the period between 30-12-1952 and 4-3-1953.

5. Section 20(2) of the Act runs:

"Where an employee is paid less than the minimum rates of wages fixed for his class of work under this Act the employee himself..........may apply to such authority for a direction under sub-section (3), provided that every such application shall be presented within six months from the date on which the minimum wages became payable, provided further that any application may be admitted after the said period of six months when the applicant satisfies the authority that he had sufficient cause for not making the application within such period."

Sub-clause (3) of Sec.20 provided for the directions to be issued by the authority in this case, the Tribunal.

6. Learned counsel for the petitioner urged that all that the first respondent himself claimed in this application dated 30-6-1953 was what was due to him under the Act for the period of six months that preceded 30-6-1953. The Tribunal treated it as a claim for the period between 1-4-1952, when the minimum wages fixed under the provisions of the Act first became payable, and 4-3-1953, when the first respondent left the services of the petitioner.

The question now is not how I should construe the application of the first respondent, but whether it furnished no basis at all for the Tribunal to hold it was a claim for the period between 1-4-1952 and 4-3-1953. It was no doubt not easy to explain how the first respondent arrived at the figure of Rs.288 which he obviously claimed as arrears of wages.

There was nothing in the order of the Tribunal to show that the first respondent did offer to explain. The interpretation placed by the learned counsel for the petitioner was that Rs.288 was arrived at by multiplying 54 the minimum wages payable for the period for which the claim was made, six times and deducting Rs.36 which the first respondent admitted was all that had been paid to him during the six months that preceded 30-6-1953.

Learned counsel for the first respondent contended that if it was really a case of a claim for 16 months at Rs.18 a month if the pe