New Delhi, March 19 A nine-judge constitutional bench of the Supreme Court on Thursday reserved its verdict on the contentious issue of defining the term "industry" under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947.
The bench, headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant, heard the submissions of various lawyers, including Attorney General R Venkataramani, Additional Solicitor General K M Nataraj, and other senior advocates such as Shekhar Naphade, Indira Jaising, C U Singh, and Sanjay Hegde, during the three-day-long hearing.
The bench, also comprising Justices B V Nagarathna, P S Narasimha, Dipankar Datta, Ujjal Bhuyan, Satish Chandra Sharma, Joymalya Bagchi, Alok Aradhe, and Vipul M Pancholi, said that it would examine the legal correctness of the 1978 judgment of a seven-judge bench, which gave an expansive interpretation of the term "industry" to govern labor relations.
On February 21, 1978, a seven-judge bench delivered a verdict on the definition of the term "industry" while deciding the plea of the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board, and expanded the definition, which brought millions of employees in hospitals, educational institutions, clubs, and government welfare departments under the protection of the Industrial Disputes (ID) Act, 1947.
On February 16, the top court had formulated the broad issues to be adjudicated by the nine-judge bench.
"Does the test laid down in paragraphs 140 to 144 in the opinion rendered by Justice V R Krishna Iyer in the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board's case (of 1978) to determine if an undertaking or enterprise falls within the definition of 'industry' lay down correct law?
"And does the Industrial Disputes (Amendment) Act, 1982 (which seemingly did not come into force), and the Industrial Relations Code, 2020 (with effect from November 21, 2025), have any legal impact on the interpretation of the expression 'industry' as contained in the principal Act?" the bench had said.
The bench had said that one of the issues to be adjudicated by the nine-judge bench would be whether social welfare activities and schemes or other enterprises undertaken by government departments or their instrumentalities can be construed to be "industrial activities" for the purpose of Section 2(j) of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947.