JUDGMENT :

(Prayer: Writ Petition filed under Article 226 of the Constitution of India, praying to issue a Writ of Mandamus forbearing the respondents No.1, 2 &7 to 37 from in any manner alternating the conditions of service of the members of the petitioner union, including discontinuance of employment or termination or failing to provide employment under the ambit of downsizing or restructuring, pending adjudication of the Industrial Dispute of the petitioner under Section 33 of the ID Act before the respondents No.3 to 6.)

1. The limited prayer sought for in the present petition is for an issuance of Writ of Mandamus, forbearing the private respondents from altering the conditions of service of the members of the petitioner-union pending adjudication of their industrial disputes raised under Section 33 of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947.

2. While the petitioner claims that their members are the workmen of the private respondents, who claim to be the concessionaires under the first respondent herein, the private respondents would submit that the members of the petitioner-union are not their workers, but rather, they were engaged under independent contractors and sub-contractors.

3. It is brought to the notice of this Court that the issue as to whether the members of the petitioner-union are workers under the concessionaires or contractors or sub-contractors, are subject matter of various Industrial Disputes raised before the concerned Conciliation Officers, where negotiations are pending.

4. When the petitioner claims that they are the workmen under the respondents'/concessionaires and would attempt to submit that their conditions of service cannot be alternated in view of Section 33 of the Act, the statute itself prescribes a remedy under Section 33-A, whenever any contraventions to the provisions of Section 33 is made.

5. When an alternative remedy is provided under the Act itself, invoking the powers of this Court under Article 226 of the Constitution of India cannot be maintained, in view of various well established precedents of the Hon'ble Supreme Court of India. In accordance with this legal ratio, an Hon'ble Division Bench of this Court, in the case of The Management of Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. Vs. Selvinth Gnanesh Joshua & another reported in 2015 (2) LW 127, had held that such a prayer in a writ petition seeking for a remedy prohibiting the employer from altering the service conditions pending adjudication of the Industrial Dispute, is not maintainable, in view of Section 33-A of the Act. The relevant portion of the order reads as follows:

22. Yet in another decision in Sharad Kumar vs. Govt. of NCT of Delhi and Others, referring to and relying on several earlier decisions rendered by the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court observed as under:

“19. On a fair reading of the provisions in Section 2(s) of the Act it is clear that “workman” means any person employed in any industry to do any manual, unskilled, skilled, technical, operational, clerical or supervisory work for hire or reward including any such person who has been dismissed, discharged or retrenched.

20. The latter part of the section excludes 4 classes of employees including a person employed mainly in a managerial or administrative capacity, or a person employed in a supervisory capacity drawing wages exceeding Rs 1600 per month or exercises functions mainly of a managerial nature. It has to be taken as an accepted principle that in order to come within the meaning of the expression “workman” in Section 2(s) the person has to be discharging any one of the types of works enumerated in the first portion of the section. If the person does not come within the first portion of the section then it is not necessary to consider the further question whether he comes within any of the classes of workmen excluded under the latter part of the section. The question whether the person concerned comes within the first part of the section depends upon the nature of duties as