The main legal point established in the judgment is that the agreement by the company to settle the arrears of salary and deposit a sum of Rs.80 lakhs towards payment of salary rendered further inquiry unnecessary, influencing the court's decision to allow the writ petition.

The company is the petitioner, engaged in the manufacture of industrial boilers and power plant equipments, having its registered office at Trichirappalli. The manufacturing unit of the company is at Kumaramangalam Village, Mathur, Pudukottai Village. There were about 130 permanent workers.

2. As the company incurred heavy loss, it was constrained to announce a lock out. The salary, payable to the employees for the month of January and February, 2015, had not been paid.

3. In the company, there are semi finished and unfinished materials to the tune of Rs.234.57 tonnes, belonging to various customers, such as SKS Power Generation (Chhattisgarh) Limited, IND Barath Energy (Utkal) Limited and Meenakshi Power, Nellore. They have placed orders for supply of products. The petitioner is not able to complete the production work for want of congenial atmosphere. The Management felt that even if the finished product cannot be supplied, at least the raw materials can be returned to them, so that they can utilize the same in their site “as is where is condition”. The petitioner company is not able to remove the goods from its campus. The removal is being physically obstructed by the labourers. Therefore, this writ of mandamus, has been filed, seeking direction to the respondents 2 and 3 to provide sufficient police protection for a specified period so as to enable the petitioner to remove the materials from the petitioner's factory site at Kumaramangalam Village, Mathur, Pudukottai District.

4. This petition was originally filed against the District Collector, Pudukottai, The Superintendent of Police, Pudukottai and the Inspector of Police, Mathur Police Station, Pudukottai District. On 06.07.2015, this Court directed the petitioner to implead the District Secretary of CITU, namely, K.Selvaraj and the General Secretary of Cethar Vessel Labour Union, by name S.Ramesh, as party respondents. Accordingly, both of them were impleaded as R4 and R5 by the order dated 06.07.2015 passed in M.P.(MD) No.1 of 2015. R6 has been impleaded by the order dated 19.08.2015 in M.P. (MD) 2 of 2015. Both the impleading petitions have been ordered by the Court, where the case was originally pending.

5. The petition was opposed by the 4th respondent on the following grounds;

a) The petitioner company is not incurring loss, as contended by the petitioner, but it is prospering. There are 7 units for manufacturing and out of 5000 workers being employed, 130 workers are permanent. These workers are represented by the 4th respondent. Remaining employees are paid through Contractors. Except 130 permanent workers, rest of them have been terminated from service during 2013 to 2014 of whom some of them are agitating their claim before the Labour Court. Many of jobs are being done through sub-contractors.

b) The company has utilized the services of the retired employees of BHEL and they are being paid very high. The petitioner company is adopting unfair labour practice. It deliberately did not pay wages to the workers for the month of January, February and March, 2015. As the workers demanded the unpaid wages, the petitioner management declared a lock out. Since then, the company has paid wages for January and 50% of wages for February, 2015. The permission sought for lay off during August, 2014 was declined by the Government. The non-payment of wages was deliberate. The intention of the petitioner company is to remove the semi finished goods to other sister concerns and thus divert the income that has to flow into the coffers of this petitioner company to its sister concern. The consequences of non-payment of salary is known to everyone and it need not be elaborated.

6. On account of non-payment of salary, the employees decided to stay in strike. There was a Peace Committee Meeting in the presence of the Tahsildar, Kolathur.

6.1. It appears, a representation was made before the Court stating that permission is required only to return back the raw materials to the sup