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Kachara Vahatuk Sharamik Sangh vs. Ajoy Mehta

Not available · 2025 INSC 1227Decided 13 Oct 2025
Not available
Justice Vikram Nath · Justice Sandeep Mehta

Background

A workers' union (the petitioner) had earlier obtained an Industrial Tribunal award directing the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), formerly the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, to treat 2,700 of its waste-transport workers as permanent employees with retrospective benefits from the date they completed 240 days of service. The BMC's challenge to this award reached the Supreme Court, which in 2017 modified and largely upheld the award (with certain agreed modifications on the effective date of monetary benefits, and directions to verify which of the 2,700 workers were actually traceable/available). When the BMC failed to properly comply for years afterward, the union filed a contempt petition in 2018. By 2024, non-compliance had become so serious that the Supreme Court summoned the Municipal Commissioner and senior BMC engineers to personally appear and explain the status.

Decision Breakdown

Reviewing the BMC's continuing failures, including delays in verification of eligible workers, incomplete payment of dues, and outstanding Provident Fund contributions (with about Rs. 228 crore found undeposited by the EPF authorities). The Court examined each outstanding compliance issue raised by the union in detail. On the Provident Fund dispute, since a related writ petition on the same issue was already pending before the Bombay High Court (with the union seeking to be impleaded there), the Supreme Court declined to pass a separate direction, leaving it to the High Court to decide on the impleadment application on its own merits so as not to influence those pending proceedings. With these clarifications and directions, the Court closed the long-pending contempt matter, discharged notices, and left it open to the parties to return to the Supreme Court if further clarification or enforcement becomes necessary.

Lesson Learnt

Even after workers win a landmark judgment for permanent status and benefits, actually getting an employer (including a government body like a municipal corporation) to comply can take years and require repeated contempt proceedings, but courts will keep tracking compliance issue-by-issue rather than letting a stale judgment go unenforced, while respecting parallel proceedings already underway in other courts on overlapping issues.

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

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