The employees of a Cantonment Board, in order to be classed as "workmen" for the purposes of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, must be employed in connection with some part of the activities of the Board which is of an industrial or quasi-industrial nature.

D.Falshaw and Gurdev Singh JJ.

1. On a reference being made by the Punjab Government, vide their notification No. 11484-C-Lab-57/20797, dated the 14th September 1957 the Industrial Tribunal, Punjab, Jullundur, made an award on the 23rd March 1959. The dispute was between the Cantonment Board, Ambala Cantonment, on the one hand and Krishna Murti employed as Record Keeper in the said Board on the other. The present petition has been filed in this Court by the aforesaid Cantonment Board under Article 226 of the Constitution of India, and the prayer made is that appropriate writs, orders and directions may be issued quashing the said award.

2. Various questions of law arise in the case and some of them are of considerable" importance and a decision regarding the same is likely to affect a large number of similar cases. The jurisdiction of the Punjab Government to make the reference in question is challenged on two main grounds which are :

(1) that the dispute between a Cantonment Board and its Record Keeper cannot be regarded as an industrial dispute as defined in the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, and

(2) that the Punjab Government is in any case not the appropriate Government for the purposes of making a reference concerning a dispute, one party to which is a Cantonment Board.

(3) I feel this is a fit case which should be heard by a larger Bench. Let this case be laid before my Lord the Chief Justice for orders under Clause (b) of the proviso to Rule 1 of Chapter 3-B of Volume V of Rules and Orders of the High Court.

D.Falshaw, J.

3 This judgment will deal with two petitions filed under Article 226 of the Constitution, Civil Writ No. 532 of 1959 and Civil Writ No. 877 of 1959, the former filed by the Cantonment Board, Ambala Cantonment, and the latter by the Cantonment Board, Kasauli and Subathu Cantonments, and the Cantonment Board, Dagshai.

4. The facts in the first petition are that by notification dated the 14th of September 1957 an industrial dispute between the workmen and the management of the Cantonment Board, Ambala Cantonment, was referred to the Punjab Industrial Tribunal at Jullundur. The dispute was categorised under ten heads, one of which (No. 2) contained ten sub-heads, some of which referred to cases of individuals. At the outset the Cantonment Board raised the objection that the Punjab Government was not the appropriate Government to make the reference. The learned Tribunal overruled this contention by the order dated the 7th of March 1958 and then proceeded to frame issues on the points referred, but after the evidence of the workmen had been led, the Central Government of its own accord appointed a National Industrial Tribunal to which most of the points in dispute were referred. In fact all the points relating to general conditions of service were so referred, and the only points left for adjudication by the Punjab Tribunal related to three individuals, the only one of whom we are now concerned with is Krishan Murti. (Krishan Murti is respondent No. 4 in the petition.)

5. Thereafter further objections of the Canton-meat Board regarding the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, even in the cases of these three individuals were overruled, and the Tribunal finally proceeded to give its award which went against the Cantonment Board Only in the case of Krishan Murti, whose reversion from the post of Record-keeper was held to be illegal, it being held that he was entitled to the salary of the Record-keeper from the date of retirement of one Ram Chandia, the 30th of September 1953, and that he should be paid the difference between the wages of the Record-keeper and the wages he was actually paid for whatever post he was holding from the date in question.

6. The other petition was filed by the Cantonment Boards of Kasauli and Subathu and of Dagshai challenging an award made by the same Tribunal, dated the 25th of May 1959, on a reference made by the Punjab Government on the 26th of February 1959 in which the main ma