Legality of industrial tribunals and labour courts challenge

NEW DELHI, September 22: The Delhi High Court has issued notices to the Union and state governments, alongwith the secretaries of the law and justice, and labour departments in Delhi government, on a petition challenging the legality of labour courts and industrial tribunals that are functioning in the Capital. The division bench comprising Justice Y.K. Sabharwal and Justice K.S. Gupta directed the respondents to file their reply to the petitioner’s allegations by December 11. The registrars of the High Court and the lower courts have also been served with the notices to clear the courts’ respective stands on the issue.

Supreme Court advocate H.K. Chaturvedi, in his public interest petition, has termed the appointment of the presiding officers in labour courts and industrial tribunals as illegal saying the two Delhi Government notifications that made their posts as cadre posts of the Delhi Higher Judicial Services (DHJS) were ultra vires of the Industrial Disputes Act and the Indian Constitution.

While Sections 7(3) and 7A(3) of the Act prescribe that a High Court judge, or a district or additional district judge with three years’ experience or a candidate having seven years’ of judicial experience can be appointed as the presiding officer of the labour courts and industrial tribunals, the Delhi government notifications of August 8, 1997, bringing them under the DHJS cadre had excluded those working outside Delhi or the Delhi High Court judges from the eligibility list. “Such changes in the provisions of the Industrial Disputes Act can be made only after a formal amendment has been cleared by the Parliament or the legislature,” the petition said.