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M/S Bennet Coleman & Co. Ltd. v. State of Bihar

Criminal Appeal · Neutral citation not assigned (Criminal Appeal No. 269 of 2015)Decided 10 Feb 2015
Criminal Appeal No. 269 of 2015
Justice Kurian Joseph · Justice N.V. Ramana

Background

A newspaper publisher was facing criminal prosecution in Patna for allegedly not properly implementing the Wage Board's (Manisana Wage Board) wage recommendations for journalists, which the complainant treated as an "award" whose breach attracted penal liability under the Industrial Disputes Act. The publisher's plea under Section 482 CrPC to quash the complaint was rejected by the High Court, leading to this appeal. Three other connected appeals and two contempt petitions involving the same legal question were tagged along.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that a Wage Board's recommendations under the Working Journalists Act are not an "award" or "settlement" as defined under the Industrial Disputes Act: they only become enforceable once the Central Government issues an order under Section 12 of the Working Journalists Act. If that order is not complied with, the remedy lies in recovery proceedings under Section 17 or a penalty under Section 18 of that Act, not a criminal prosecution for unfair labour practice under Section 25U of the I.D. Act. Since no Labour Court had yet passed any award on the pending wage dispute (which was separately before the Labour Court, Patna), the prosecution was premature and not legally maintainable. The Court accordingly quashed the complaint and the Magistrate's cognizance order, allowed all four connected appeals on the same reasoning, and dismissed the two contempt petitions as having become infructuous, while directing the Labour Court to dispose of the pending wage reference expeditiously.

Lesson Learnt

A government wage board's "recommendations" are not automatically an enforceable "award": criminal prosecution for violating labour law can only follow an actual award, settlement or Government order that has been notified and then breached, not a recommendation that hasn't yet been given legal force.

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

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