9911796707
TMI Blog1955 (3) TMI 43X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... lway Administration as a carpenter on daily wages, and has been treated as a daily rated casual labourer and has been paid his wages at the rate of ₹ 3-4-0 per day. He continued receiving his wages at that rate until October, 1949 without any demur, and granting receipts for the wages thus received. On the 2nd December, 1949 an application was made by one K. N. Pitkar an official of Registered Trade Union, a person permitted by the Authority under sub-section (2) of section 15 of the Payment of Wages Act, 1936, against the G.I.P. Ry. administration through its Divisional Engineer, Parel, Bombay. It was alleged on behalf of the 2nd respondent that his wages due in respect of six months from May to October 1949 amounting to ₹ 245 had not been paid or had been subjected to illegal deductions as shown in the schedule. The schedule will be set out hereinafter. A claim for ₹ 245 plus ₹ 15 by way of compensation was made. 3. The appellant, as the opposite party before the Authority, resisted the claim, inter alia, on the grounds - (1) that ₹ 245 had not been illegally deducted from the wages of the 2nd respondent; and (2) that the claim ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... eeded its jurisdiction in entertaining the 2nd respondent's application. On the appellant's application for leave to appeal to this court being rejected by the High Court, the appellant moved this court and obtained special leave to appeal on the 2nd February 1953. 7. The main controversy between the parties in this court is whether, having regard to the relevant provisions of the Act, the 1st respondent was competent to pass the orders it did, which orders had been upheld by the High Court of Bombay. 8. The Authority set up under section 15 of the statute in question is indisputably a tribunal of limited jurisdiction. Its power to hear and determine disputes must necessarily be found in the provisions of the Act. Such a tribunal, it is undoubted, cannot determine any controversy which is not within the ambit of those provisions. On examining the relevant provisions of the Act it will be noticed that it aims at regulating the payment of wages to certain classes of persons employed in industry. It applies in the first instance to the payment of wages to persons employed in any factory or employed by a railway administration; but the State Government has the power after ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... ction 9 deals with deductions on account of absence from duty and prescribes the limits and the proportion thereof to wages. Section 10 similarly deals with deductions for damage or loss to the employer and the procedure for determining the same. Like section 8, this section also requires a register of such deductions and realizations to be maintained by the person responsible for the payment of wages. Section 11 lays down the limits of deductions for house accommodation and other amenities or services which may have been accepted by the employee, subject to such conditions as the State Government may impose. Section 12 lays down the conditions subject to which deductions for recovery of advances may be made from wages. Finally section 13 provides that the deductions for payment to co-operative societies and insurance schemes shall be subject to such conditions as the State Government may prescribe. Section 14 makes provision for the appointment of Inspectors for carrying out the purpose of the Act, with power to enter on any premises and to examine any registers or documents relating to the calculation or payment of wags and to take evidence on the spot. His function is to see ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... provides that rules may be made inter alia, requiring the maintenance of records, registers, returns and notices necessary under the Act and the display in a conspicuous place of notices specifying the rates of wages payable to persons employed on such premises; and prescribing the authority for making a list of acts and omissions in respect of which fines may be imposed and the procedure for imposing such fines. 10. We have set out above in some detail the relevant provisions of the Act in order to point out that those provisions are not applicable to the complaint made in the present case. In this connection it is necessary to set out in extenso the particulars of claim in the schedule appended to his application which are as follows : The applicant is working as a carpenter-mason with the opposite party under I. O. W., Byculla. According to the orders on introduction of the prescribed scales, the Railway Administration has to make the staff working under I.O.W. on permanent monthly wages scheme under the rules of the prescribed scales. The applicant along with others was up till now under daily wages scheme. About 20 posts under I.O.W. where the applicant is workin ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... 15 could entertain the dispute. But it is said on behalf of the respondent that the authority has the jurisdiction not only to make directions contemplated by sub-section (3) of section 15 to refund to the employed person any amount unlawfully deducted but also to find out what the terms of the contract were so as to determine what the wages of the employed person were. There is no difficulty in accepting that proposition. If the parties entered into the contract of service, say by correspondence and the contract is to be determined with reference to the letters that passed between them, it may be open to the authority to decide the controversy and find out what the terms of the contract with reference to those letters were. But if an employee were to say that his wages were ₹ 100 per month which he actually received as and when they fell due but that he would be entitled to higher wages if his claims to be placed on the higher wages scheme had been recognized and given effect to, that would not, in our opinion, be a matter within the ambit of his jurisdiction. The authority has the jurisdiction to decide what actually the terms of the contract between the parties were, ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... n to come to its final conclusions, as it appeared to us during the hearing of the case that all relevant information had not been placed before the Authority. But, as, in our opinion, that is not a matter within its limited jurisdiction, that contingency does not arise. 14. For the reasons given above we allow this appeal, quash the orders of the Authority and of the High Court, but in the special circumstances of this case we make no order as to costs. B. Jagannadhadas, J. 15. I regret that I find myself unable to agree. 16. The second respondent before us, employed as a carpenter in the Railway since 1941, has been working as a daily-rated casual labourer. He claimed that he should have been absorbed as a monthly-rated permanent employee and that he has been wrongly superseded. His claim to be treated as a permanent employee was apparently not accepted by the Tribunal (the Authority under section 15 of the Payment of Wages Act for Bombay). But it was held that the position of the applicant is not that of a daily-rated casual labourer but that of a monthly-rated temporary employee. His claim was treated and upheld by the Tribunal as one substantially based on the ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... Tribunal arises under section 15 of the Payment of Wages Act, 1936 (Act IV of 1936) (hereinafter referred to as the Act). The Tribunal is set up to decide all claims arising out of deductions from the wages or delay in payment of wages . The relief which it is authorised to award is to direct the refund of the amount deducted, or the payment of the wages delayed . Such a direction made by the Tribunal is final, under section 17 of the Act, subject to the right of appeal provided therein. Under section 22, no suit lies in any court for the recovery of wages or of any deduction there from which could have been recovered by an application under section 15. However limited this jurisdiction of the Tribunal, and however elaborate the provisions in the Act for the preparation and display by the employer of the table of wages payable to the employees, and for the inspection thereof by the Factory Inspectors, it cannot be supposed that the jurisdiction of the Tribunal is only to enforce the wages so displayed or otherwise admitted. Such a narrow construction would rob the machinery of the Act of a great deal of its utility and would confine its application to cases which are not likely ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... well fall within its scope. The wage under the Act is not, necessarily, the immediately pre-existing wage but the presently-payable wage. 19. In the case before us, the order of the Tribunal proceeded on the view that the applicant was presently entitled to be treated as a monthly-rated temporary employee and not as a daily-rated casual labourer, by virtue of the directions of the Railway Board for the implementation of the scheme of classification and that therefore he was entitled to the appropriate higher wage. We have not been shown any material to indicate that this higher classification of the applicant depended not on the mere application, of the classification scheme and the rules there under, to him but upon any determination by a departmental higher authority. If it was the latter, undoubtedly the Tribunal cannot claim to sit in judgment over that determination, whether it was right or wrong. Such determination, if wrong, could be corrected only by a further departmental appeal, if any, available. But the Tribunal had, to my mind, the authority to find whether the applicant's case falls within the scope of determination by the departmental authority or is one of me ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X
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