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Sudhir & Ors. v. Head of Human Resource, Dainik Bhaskar Group (D.B. Corp. Ltd.) & Ors.

Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 834Decided 11 Aug 2026
C.A. No.-010612-010627 - 2026 (arising out of SLP (C) Nos. 2824-2839 of 2023, with connected appeals)
Justice Dipankar Datta · Justice Sheel Nagu

Background

Journalist-employees of newspaper groups including Dainik Bhaskar and All India Reporter had wage disputes referred to Labour Courts in Maharashtra, but the references were made not by the State Government directly, as required by Section 17(2) of the Working Journalists Act, but by Additional/Deputy Commissioners of Labour to whom the State Government (GoM) had purported to delegate that power via a 2016 notification. Two Bombay High Court benches (Aurangabad and Nagpur) held that Section 17(2) does not permit such delegation and set aside the resulting Labour Court awards and references, prompting appeals by the affected employees and unions to the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court agreed with the High Court that Section 17(2) vests the power to refer a dispute to the Labour Court exclusively in the State Government itself, distinguishing it from Section 17(1), which does allow delegation for the separate, narrower function of issuing a recovery certificate in undisputed cases. Because the statute requires the State Government's own satisfaction that a genuine dispute exists before a reference is made, that decision-making function could not be sub-delegated to the specified authorities, and the Court rejected arguments that the Working Journalists Act's beneficial character or comparisons to the Industrial Disputes Act justified reading in an implied power of delegation. However, rather than simply dismissing the appeals and leaving employees without remedy (especially since the Act has since been repealed and replaced by the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020) the Court used its powers under Article 142 of the Constitution to craft a transitional remedy: the State Government must independently revisit every affected reference, record fresh satisfaction on whether a genuine dispute existed, and either make a fresh valid reference (with proceedings continuing from where they left off) or notify the employee that no dispute existed, in which case the employee could pursue other recovery remedies.

Lesson Learnt

A statutory power to make an administrative reference of a dispute to a court or tribunal cannot be delegated unless the law expressly says so, even where a related but distinct power in the same section can be delegated, and where strict enforcement of that rule would strand years of pending litigation on a technicality, the Supreme Court can use its Article 142 powers to fashion a practical, fair transition rather than leaving affected workers with nothing.

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

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