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Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers Limited v. GRSE Limited Workmens Union

Civil Appeal · 2025 INSC 363Decided 25 Feb 2025
Civil Appeal No. 3243 of 2025 (arising out of SLP(C) No. 28399/2024)
Justice Dipankar Datta · Justice Rajesh Bindal

Background

Workers' union members had filed a writ petition seeking compassionate appointment at Garden Reach Shipbuilders (a public sector undertaking), which a Single Judge of the Calcutta High Court had de-listed pending a Supreme Court reference on the applicable policy. A Division Bench hearing an unrelated intra-court appeal against that de-listing order agreed, with both parties' consent, to hear and finally decide the underlying writ petition itself: ultimately ordering the company to give compassionate appointments to 48 of 51 petitioners.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that under the Calcutta High Court's own rules, only the Chief Justice (as "master of the roster") can assign which bench hears which category of case, and the parties' mutual consent cannot confer jurisdiction on a bench to hear a writ petition outside its assigned subject-matter allocation, citing the settled principle that "consent does not confer jurisdiction." Since neither the predecessor Division Bench nor the bench that passed the impugned order had been authorised to hear this category of service writ petition, the order was void for want of jurisdiction; the Court set it aside without going into the merits and remanded the writ petition to be assigned by the Chief Justice to the properly authorised bench, while GRSE undertook not to make appointments in the meantime that would render the case moot.

Lesson Learnt

No matter how willing both sides are, a court cannot hear and decide a case that has not been properly assigned to it by the Chief Justice's roster: jurisdiction by consent is not real jurisdiction, and a decision issued without it is a nullity.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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