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CIVIL APPELLATE JURISDICTION :Civil Appeal No. 402 of 1961. Appeal by special leave from the award dated February 11, 1960, of the Industrial Tribunal, Punjab, Reference No. 5 of 1959.

G. B. Pai, J. B. Dadachanji, 0. C. Mathur and Ravinder Narain, for the appellant.

C. B. Aggarwal, H. C. Aggarwal and Janardan Sharma, for the respondents.

1962. March 5. The Judgment of the Court was delivered by VENKATARAMA AIYAR, J.-This is an appeal by special leave against the award of the Industrial Tribunal, Punjab, passed in Reference No. 5 of 1959 on February 11, 1960. The appellant is a Public Limited Company incorporated under the Indian Companies Act, 1913, and it carries on business in the manufacture and sale of electric cables, wires etc. Its registered office is at Calcutta and its factory is located at Jamshedpur. Before January 1, 1956, it had no branches and was selling its goods through Messrs Gillanders Arbuthnot and Co., as its agents. During this period, a company incorporated in England and called the British Insulated Callendars Cables Ltd. referred to as the B.I.C.C. Ltd., in these proceedings was carrying on business in the sale of cables and wires in India with branches at Bombay, Madras, Calcutta, Delhi, Trivandrum, Ahmedabad, Nagpur, Kanpur, Bangalore and Ambala. Towards the end of 1955, the B.I.C.C. Ltd. decided to stop its trading in India and to close its branches. The appellant Company then decided to take them over and run them as its own. The workmen in the service of the B.I.C.C. Ltd. were most of them offered reemployment on terms and conditions contained in a communication dated November 23, 1955, sent by the appellant to them, and they having accepted them the branches began to function as those of the appellant from January 1,. 1956. Among the branches thus taken over was the one at Ambala. The business of that branch consisted, apart from the sale of goods manufactured by the appellant, in the execution of the contracts of the B.I.C.C. Ltd., with the Government of Punjab, which it had taken over. These contracts were about to be completed in the beginning of 1958, and as, having regard to the volume of its, own business in that area, the appellant considered that the maintenance of a branch at Ambala was unremunerative, it decided to close it. Accordingly on May 8, 1958, it terminated the services of all its workmen at Ambala, numbering 11 in all,paid them their salaries, wages in lieu of notice, retrenchment compensation, gratuity, and provident fund, and wound up the branch.. According to the appellant, the workmen accepted these amounts without any protest and co-operated with the management in the despatch of its goods to Delhi and other places. It is the ease of the workmen that they received the amounts under protest. But nothing, however, turns on this. On June 5, 1958, six of the workmen who had been discharged on May 8, 1958, sent a representation to the management complaining that the closure of the branch was unjustified, that as all the branches of the Company formed one unit, the retrenchment should be done according to "All India seniority basis" and that the workmen had a legal right to get employment in the other branches. A copy of this representation was sent to the Punjab Government, which issued a notification on February 2, 1959, referring the dispute for adjudication to the Industrial Tribunal, Punjab, under s. (1)(d) of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, hereinafter referred to as "the Act." The reference was in these terms :-

(1) [1956]1.L.L.J.557,558.

Discussing the question on the principles stated above, it is not in dispute that the appellant was not carrying on business anywhere in Punjab on the date of the reference. The Punjab Government would therefore have jurisdiction to make the reference only if the cause of action had arisen wholly or in part within the State. If the validity of .he closure of the branch had itself been in dispute, the cause of action must undoubtedly be held to have arisen within the State and the reference would be competent. It is argued for the respondents that as the retrenchment on which, the dispute has arisen was made in Ambala, the State of Punjab had jurisdiction to refer under s. 10 of the Act, the question of the appropriate reliefs to be granted under s. 25G. But the appellants contend thatwhen once the closure itself is accepted as valid and binding, then there could be no question of retrenchment, which can only be with reference to a continuing industry as held by this Court in Pipraich Sugar Mills Ltd. v. Pipraich Sugar Mills Mazdoor Union(1) and Hariprasad Shivshankar Shukla v. A. D. Divikar (2) and that to attract s. 25G, it must be held that the Calcutta office and the branches all form one establishment and that in that view as relief under that section could be granted only in relation to branches situate in other States, no part of the cause of action could be held to have arisen within the State of Punjab. In the view we are taking on the question as to whether the branch at Ambala was an industrial establishment within s. 25G, we do not consider it necessary to express any opinion on this question.

It is then contended for the respondents that even apart from the support of the union, their dispute must be considered to be an industrial dispute, because six of the workmen have joined in it, and if regard is had only to the Ambala branch, they even constituted a majority. To this the appellant replies that the claim of the respondents that retrenchment should have been made under s. 25 G of the Act after pooling for purposes of seniority all the branches proceeds on the footing that all the branches from one establishment, that that is also the basis on which the reference dated February 2, 1959, is made, that therefore in deciding whether a considerable number of workmen have joined in the dispute, regard must be had to the number of workmen in all the branches, and that was 860, and that six out of 860 was an infinitesimal number, a mere drop in an ocean, and that therefore the disputes did not become industrial disputes. The respondents retort that the contention of the appellant that in discharging the respondents, it had not violated s. 25 G proceeds on an assertion that the Ambala branch is a distinct industrial establishment, (1) [1961]2. L.L.J. 430.

and that on that footing the respondents from a majority of the workmen being six out of eleven. It is manifest that the stand taken by both the parties on the question whether the dispute in backed by considerable number of workmen is inconsistent with the stand taken by them on the question whether the discharge of the workmen at Ambala was in contravention of s. 25G of the Act. In this situation the course which we propose to adopt is first to determine whether the branch at Ambala is a separate industrial establishment within s. 25 G of the Act, and then decide the rights of the parties in accordance therewith. (4) Section 25 G provides that when it is proposed to retrench workmen on the ground of surplusage the rule that the last to come should be the first to go should ordinarily be observed. But this is subject to two limitations. It operates only within the establishment in which the retrenchment is to be made and to the category to which the retrenched workmen belong. It is these two factors that are determinative of the true scope` of the section. Now what is an industrial establishment ? There is a definition of it given in the Explanation to s. 25 A(2) but that is limited to ss. 25C, 25D and 25E, There being no definition of the expression in that Act applicable to s. 25G, we must construct it in its ordinary sense, guided by such indications as the context might furnish. In Pravat Kumar Kar v. W.T.C. Parker (1), Harries, C.J., observed that the words "industrial establishment" meant the place at which the workmen were employed, and that accor- dingly s. 23 of the Act which imposes a prohibition against strikes by any "workman who is employed in any, industrial establishment" could not cover a case of workmen in Bombay striking against an employer with whom employees in Calcutta have a (1) [1949] 1.F.J.R. 245.