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Hindustan Journals Ltd. v. Dinesh Awasthi
Factual and Procedural Background
The petitioner filed an application under Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution of India seeking a direction to prohibit the authority appointed under Section 15(1) of the Payment of Wages Act, 1936 from entertaining a claim by the non-applicant, Dinesh Awasthi, under Section 15(2) of the Act. Dinesh Awasthi had submitted a claim alleging unlawful deductions and withholding of salary by the petitioner, who was his employer at Hindustan Journals Ltd., where he worked as a reporter and sub-editor. The claim included Rs. 310 for salary and deductions and Rs. 3000 as compensation. The petitioner objected, arguing that the authority lacked jurisdiction as the claim did not fall within the purview of the Payment of Wages Act.
The authority framed an issue on jurisdiction, specifically whether the claim fell under the Payment of Wages Act and whether the authority had jurisdiction. Evidence was led, but it focused on whether Hindustan Journals Ltd. and the Modern Printing Press were the same establishment, whether manufacturing processes were carried out, and whether the prescribed number of workers were employed. The authority concluded that the Nav-Prabhat office where Awasthi worked was part of a factory as defined under the Factories Act, 1948, and thus had jurisdiction to entertain the claim.
The petitioner challenged this conclusion, contending that Awasthi was not employed in a factory as defined under the Act, and that the authority had erred in its jurisdictional finding.
Legal Issues Presented
- Whether the non-applicant Dinesh Awasthi was a person employed in a factory within the meaning of Section 1(4) of the Payment of Wages Act, 1936, thereby attracting the jurisdiction of the authority under Section 15(1) of the Act.
- Whether the authority appointed under the Payment of Wages Act had jurisdiction to entertain the claim made by Dinesh Awasthi.
- The proper interpretation of the terms "factory" and "manufacturing process" as defined in the Factories Act, 1948, and their application to the facts of the case.
Arguments of the Parties
Petitioner's Arguments
- The authority lacked jurisdiction because the claim by Dinesh Awasthi did not fall within the scope of the Payment of Wages Act.
- The petitioner objected that the nature of the claim was outside the purview of the Act.
- The petitioner argued that Awasthi was not employed in a factory as defined by the Factories Act, 1948, since the Hindustan Journals Ltd. and the Modern Printing Press were separate concerns.
- The petitioner contended that mere proximity of the printing press to the employer’s office and the presence of a teleprinter did not constitute employment in a factory.
- The petitioner emphasized that the term "employed in any factory" means employment by the owner of the factory, not merely working adjacent to or in proximity to a factory.
Non-Applicant's Arguments (Dinesh Awasthi)
- Dinesh Awasthi claimed he was employed by Hindustan Journals Ltd., which operated in premises that included a manufacturing process as defined under the Factories Act.
- He relied on the authority’s finding that the Nav-Prabhat office and the Modern Printing Press were closely linked and formed a factory within the meaning of the Act.
- He argued that the presence of the teleprinter operated by electric power and the editing and proof-reading activities in the press premises constituted a manufacturing process.
Table of Precedents Cited
| Precedent | Rule or Principle Cited For | Application by the Court |
|---|---|---|
| Khuda Bux v. Manager, Caledonian Press, AIR 1954 Cal 484 (A) | Interpretation that references in the Payment of Wages Act, 1936 to the Factories Act, 1934 must be read as references to the Factories Act, 1948 by virtue of Section 8 of the General Clauses Act, 1897. | Supported the court’s reading of statutory references to the updated Factories Act, ensuring correct application of definitions regarding factories and manufacturing processes. |
Court's Reasoning and Analysis
The Court examined the definitions of "factory" and "manufacturing process" under the Factories Act, 1948, and their applicability to the claim under the Payment of Wages Act, 1936. It noted that for the Act to apply, the claimant must be employed in premises where a manufacturing process is carried out and where the prescribed number of workers are employed.
The Court found that the authority had taken an incorrect approach by focusing on the proximity of the Hindustan Journals Ltd. office to the Modern Printing Press rather than on the essential fact of employment by the factory owner. The Court emphasized that "employed in any factory" means employment by the owner of the factory, not merely physical presence or use of factory premises.
The Court further held that the authority failed to properly investigate or make definite findings on whether the two establishments were one concern and whether the claimant was employed in a factory. The authority's reliance on the teleprinter and editing activities as constituting a manufacturing process was rejected, as these activities did not amount to manufacturing under the statutory definition.
The Court concluded that the authority's decision on jurisdiction was vitiated by a wrong approach, failure to consider material facts, and irregular procedure. Therefore, the Court set aside the authority's jurisdictional decision and directed a proper inquiry with clear issues to be framed and investigated.
Holding and Implications
The petition was allowed.
The Court set aside the decision of the authority regarding jurisdiction and directed it to re-examine the question of jurisdiction after properly framing issues and allowing the parties to elucidate their positions. The authority was also directed to dispose of the case finally by one order as the matter had been pending for a long time. The parties were left to bear their own costs.
The decision directly affects the parties by requiring a fresh and proper jurisdictional inquiry but does not establish any new precedent beyond clarifying the correct application of statutory definitions and jurisdictional principles under the Payment of Wages Act and Factories Act.
Dixit, J.:— By this application under Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution of India the petitioner prays for the issue of a suitable direction to prohibit the authority appointed under Section 15(1) of the Payment of Wages Act, 1936 from entertaining a claim of the non-applicant Dinesh Awasthi under S. 15(2) of the Act.
2. The matter arises thus. On 16th November 1953 the opponent Dinesh Awasthi presented an application before the authority appointed under the Payment of Wages Act, 1936, stating that he was employed by the Hindustan Journals Ltd., first as a reporter and then as a subeditor on a salary of Rs. 100/- per month of ‘Nav Prabhat’ a daily Hindi newspaper published in Gwalior; that his services were terminated on 14th October 1953; and that the petitioner had unlawfully made a deduction of Rs. 20/- from his monthly salary, withheld the payment of his salary from 31st August 1953 to 14th October 1953 and had refused to pay him one month's pay in lieu of the leave due to him. Dinesh Awasthi prayed for a direction for the payment to him of Rs. 310/- on account of the salary and illegal deduction. He also claimed an amount of Rs. 3000/- as compensation. In reply the petitioner raised several objections resisting the claim. One of the objections was that the authority had no jurisdiction to entertain Awasthi's claim inasmuch as on account of its nature, it did not fall within the purview of the Payment of Wages Act, 1936. The objection in Hindi ran as follows:
3. On 6th January 1954 the non-applicant Dinesh’ Awasthi made an application praying inter alia that the petitioner be called upon to elucidate as to what he meant by “the nature of claim” when he said that on account of it, the Court had no jurisdiction. This application was filed by the Page: 126authority without any order thereon. The authority then framed an issue on the question of jurisdiction to the following effect:
“Whether the nature of the claim is such that it falls under the Payment of Wages Act and whether the Court has jurisdiction to hear the claim”.
4. The wording of the issue in Hindi was:
5. The evidence which the parties led on this issue had, however, no bearing whatsoever on the question of the nature of claim. The evidence related to the question whether the Hindusthan Journals Ltd., and the Modern Printing Press where the new paper Nav Prabhat was being printed were different concerns or one and the same; whether any manufacturing process was carried on in the printing and publication of the newspaper and whether the number of persons employed in Hindustan Journals Ltd., exceeded twenty. On that evidence the authority under the Payment of Wages Act expressed its conclusion in the following words:
“I therefore hold that work that is carried on in Nav-Prabhat office comes within the meaning of the manufacturing process. The three important ingredients of a factory being thus present in New-Prabhat; it is held that the office of the New-Prabhat comes within the meaning of factory as defined in the Factories Act.”
6. Accordingly it held that it was competent to entertain and hear the claim made by Dinesh Awasthi under S. 15(2).
7. The question that arises in this petition is whether the opponent Dinesh Awasthi is a person to whom the Payment of Wages Act, 1936 can be applied. The material provision is S. 1(4) of the Act, which provides that the Act applies in the first instance to the payment of wages to persons employed in any factory. We are not concerned here with the other persons spoken of in S. 1(4) or with sub-S. 5. According to S. 2 ‘factory’ means a factory as defined in clause (j) of Section 2 of the Factories Act, 1934.
8. The Factories Act, 1934 was repealed and reenacted by the Factories Act of 1948. The references in the Payment of Wages Act, 1936 to the Factories Act of 1934 must, by virtue of Section 8 of the General Clauses Act, 1897, be read as references to the Factories Act 1948. See Khuda Bux… v. Manager, Caledonian Press…. Press, AIR 1954 Cal 484 (A). There is no dispute on this point. Section 2(m) of the Factories Act, 1948 defines ‘factory’ thus:
“‘Factory’ means any premises including the precincts thereof—
(i) Whereon ten or more workers are working or were working on any day of the preceding twelve months, and in any part of which a manufacturing process is being carried on with the aid) of power, or is ordinarily so carried on, or (II) Whereon twenty or more workers are working or were working on any day of the preceding twelve months and in any part of which a manufacturing process is being carried on without the aid of power, or is ordinarily so carried on but does not include a mine subject to the operation of the Indian Mines Act, 1923 (IV of 1923), or a railway running shed:”
9. S. 2(1) of the same Act gives the definition of ‘manufacturing process’. According to that definition ‘manufacturing process’ means any process for—
(i) making, altering, repairing, ornamenting, finishing, packing, oiling, washing, cleaning, breaking up, demolishing, or otherwise treating pr adapting any article or substance with a view to its use, sale transput, delivery or disposal or………….
(iv) printing by letterpress, lithography, photogravure or other similar work or book-binding-which is carried on by way of trade or for purposes of gain, or incidentally to another business so carried on; or”
10. It will be seen from these definitions that in order to apply the Act to a person under the first part of S. 1(4), it is essential that the person must be one employed in any premises including the precincts thereof, whereon ten or more persons are working or were working in any part of which a manufacturing process is being carried on with the aid of power. Or he must be employed in any premises whereon twenty or more persons are working or were working and in which a manufacturing process is being carried on without the aid of power. It is not necessary that the person himself should be working in the manufacturing process. All that is necessary is that he should be employed in the premises in which the requisite number of persons are employed in at manufacturing process.
11. It follows from the above definitions that it must be a question of fact in each case whether or not a person applying under Section 15(2) of the Payment of Wages Act is one employed in any factory and the facts needing investigation would to (1) whether he is employed; (2) whether his employment is in any premises including the precincts thereof whereon the prescribed number of workers were working in the prescribed period: (3) and whether in any part of those premises a manufacturing process was being carried on.
12. An objection that the Payment of Wages authority has no jurisdiction to entertain a claim by a person because he does not come within the first part of S. 1(4) of the Act may thus be founded on the want of any or all of the above essentials. The party raising the objection as to jurisdiction must, therefore, specify clearly as to how the claimant is not a person employed in any factory. In the instant case the petitioner in his reply did not in express words take the objection that the opponent Dinesh Awasthi was not a person employed in any factory.
13. The objection was that the opponent's claim by its nature was outside the scope of the Payment of Wages Act. The issue framed was also as regards this specific objection. It is, therefore, not clear how the parties were permitted to lead evidence altogether irrelevant to the issue actually framed on the statements of the parties. There is nothing on the record to show that after the framing of the issue, the non-petitioner gave up the objection he had raised and the parties agreed that the objection as to jurisdiction rested on the question whether the opponent Dinesh Awasthi was a person employed in a factory and that objection needed investigation only sc far as to whether the Hindustan Journals Ltd., and the Modern Printing Press were one concern, whether any manufacturing process was being carried on therein and whether the Hindusthan Journals Ltd., employed the prescribed number of persons.
14. Be that as it may, the result of this unsatisfactory procedure followed by the authority in the investigation of the question of Jurisdiction has been that the attention of the parties was not focussed Page: 127on the essentials they were required to prove or rebut with regard to the fact whether the opponent Dinesh Awasthi was a person employed in a factory and the authority has also not given any precise and definite finding on the material facts.
15. On the evidence on record the authority under the Payment of Wages Act first held that “the Gawlior office of the Nav-Prabhat is located in Indergang in a building known as Shitloe's Bada. In the same building adjacent to the Nav-Prabhat office is located the ‘Modern Printing Press’ named by the Gwalior Printers and Publishers Ltd. The entire manuscript of the Nav-Prabhat paper is compiled in the Nav Prabhat office and such a manuscript is got printed daily from the Modern Printing Press from where thousands of copies are printed and published for distribution amongst the reading public.”
16. It then made the somewhat inconsistent observation that “the press and the Nav-Prabhat are not two separate water-tight compartments. Evidence shows that they are mixed up with each other in respect of their management, control and the realisation and disbursement of money”. This is all what the authority had to say on the point whether the Hindusthan Journals Ltd., and the Modern Printing Press where the newspaper Nav Prabhat was printed were one establishment or separate establishments. The authority did not determine in positive and definite terms whether the two concerns were so closely related as to form one entire establishment so as to make a person employed by the Hindustan Journals Ltd., as one employed by the press itself.
17. If the office of the Hindustan Journals where the opponent Dinesh Awasthi was working as a sub-editor formed part of the establishment where the newspaper Nav Prabhat was printed, then of course there could no doubt that Dinesh Awasthi was employed in the premises where the manufacturing process was carried on. The authority did not consider this aspect of the matter at all and overlooked altogether the fact that under section 2(k) of the Factories Act, 1948 manufacturing process has been expressly defined to mean inter alia printing by letterpress.
18. The authority founded its conclusion that the opponent Awasthi was a person employed in a factory mainly on the fact that a teleprinter run by electric power belonging to Nav Prabhat was kept in a portion of the building where the Modem Printing Press was located and that the sub-editors and other persons belonging to Nav-Prabhat sat in the press during night hours”, attended to the teleprinter and also did proof-reading.
19. On analysis it will be found that this view proceeds on the basis that the Hindustan Journals Ltd., who own the paper ‘Nav Prabhat’ and the Modem Printing Press are altogether different concerns: that the opponent Awasthi though employed by the Hindustan Journals Ltd., in whose premises no manufacturing process was carried on, yet became employed in the adjoining premises where the Printing Press was located by reason of the fact that a teleprinter belonging to Nav Prabhat was placed in the Press and the sub-editors and reporters of the paper sat in the Press, took down, messages from the very teleprinter and did proof-reading.
20. In taking this view the authority attached all weight to the nroximity of the premises of the Hindustan Journals Ltd., and the Modern Printing Press, overlooking altogether the significance of the word ‘employed’ in the expression ‘employed in any factory’. That expression to my mind, means employed in a factory by the owner of the factory. A person employed by a concern which is not a factory, cannot clearly become one “employed in any factory” by the mere placing certain articles belonging to the non-factory concern in a factory or by the presence of that person in a factory.
21. Any meaning making a concern which is not in fact a factory, ‘a factory’ by its proximity to a factory would be utterly inconsistent with the object of the Payment of Wages Act which is to regulate the payment of wages to certain classes of persons employed in factories and in industrial establishments. If the test of the proximity of premises followed by the authority is accepted as the true test for constituting a person as one employed in a factory then it is easy to see that in a factory if the administrative establishment is located in one building and the actual manufacturing process is carried on in another building situated at a considerable distance, then persons on the administrative establishment would cease to be persons employed in the factory even though the two buildings are a part of one and the same establishment.
22. On the same test it would also follow that a newspaper publishing concern would be a factory even if it does not own a Press of its own, gets the manuscript ready by its staff in its own office and then gets it printed by an independent and adjacent Press on payment of the necessary charges. I entertain no doubt that such an inclusion or exclusion of premises as factories is not intended by the meaning of the word ‘factory’ and of the expression ‘employed in any factory’. In my judgment on the true construction of the expression ‘persons employed in any factory’ a person cannot be said to be one answering the description unless he is employed by the owner of the factory as defined in section 2(m) of the Factories Act 1948.
23. In support of its conclusion, the authority also observed in the alternative that “the teleprinter machine is a part and parcel of the Nav Prabhat and although it is kept in the press it makes no difference. This machine is run by electric power and sheets of News reels are constantly manufactured out of this machine. These news reels are taken out of the machine and the news printed therein is given new heading, it is moulded into a new form, and it takes a different shape. In this way the manufacturing process is carried on in Nav-Prabhat with the aid of power”.
24. In this observation the authority regarded the location of the teleprinter as immaterial & thought that the receipt of messages on a teleprinter and; editing of the news items constituted a manufacturing process. I am unable to accept this view, I fail to see how “news reels are constantly manufactured by the teleprinter machine, which is merely a telegraphic instrument for conveying messages in printed form. Surely the machine does not manufacture any news-paper reel and the news printed on that reel cannot be said to the “manufactured” by the machine.
25. The authority has made an attempt to show how the news received by the news-paper from various sources is adapted, altered and made attractive and how this process is a manufacturing process under section 2(k)(i) of the Factories Act, 1948. In all its discussion on the point, the authority lost sight of the essential fact that a “news” is not an alert or sub-star or commodify to the making, altering, repairing, ornamenting, finishing or adapting of which section 2(k)(i) has a reference. I find it extremely difficult to comprehend how in the editing itself of any ‘news’ any manufacturing process is carried on.
26. From what has been stated above, it is plain that the finding of the authority on the question of jurisdiction is vitiated by an altogether wrong approach to the question, by its omission to consider and investigate the material facts and by the irregular procedure followed in the investigation of the question. I am, therefore, of the opinion that this petition must be accepted and in the exercise of this Court's power and section 227 of the Constitution, the decision of the authority on the question of jurisdiction should be set aside and it should be directed to call upon the petitioner to elucidate his, plea on the question of the lack of jurisdiction and then to investigate the question after framing proper issues. As the matter has been pending before the authority for a very long time it would also be proper to direct that the authority should determine the question of jurisdiction along with the other questions raised in the case and dispose of the case finally by one order. In the circumstances of the case I would leave the parties to bear their own costs.
A.H Khan, J.:— I agree.
27. Petition allowed.
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