NUJ-Highlights of SC

verdict
Apex Court says
Employers cannot be
allowed
To take advantage of
their own wrongs
 NUJ(I) lists highlights of the SC
verdict on wage board award
petition by Newspaper industry
managements
(7 pages, 2142 words )
 1.In dismissing the plethora of petitions
filed by different newspaper and news
agency managements in the Supreme
Court against the Government notification
of November 2011 accepting the bulk of
the recommendations of the two wage
boards headed by Justice (Retd.) Majithia,
the apex court found that the employers
did not provide the data about their
finances asked for by the Boards.
 Having denied the Boards the data
despite repeated calls to give it, the
industry managements cannot be
allowed to take advantage of their
own wrong and impugn the
recommendations of the Wage
Boards as not being based on their
data when they eluded to submit the
said data in the first place.
 1.1 This is one of the severe expose of the tactics
adopted by NP managements that the Honble
Supreme Courts verdict reveals to elude the
Boards and then complain about the
recommendations being a denial of natural justice
to them. The National Union of Journalists
(India) which along with other newspaper
employee federations participated in defending
the interests of the employees in the apex court,
has culled out major findings of the court regarding
the claims that the management petitioners made
before the court.
 1.2 NUJ(I) members must remember that the
managements not only lined up 12 top senior
advocates practicing in the court to argue
their case, they also sought to prolong the
proceedings by coming to the court one by
one and then forcing adjournment of
hearings. The case filed on. had to be
moved from one Bench of the court to
another for two years and ultimately was
decided by a three judge Bench headed by
the Chief Justice himself.
 1.3 Besides Chief Justice P. Sathasivam, the
other judges who constituted the Bench were
Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice S.K. Singh. The
Bench unanimously rejected all the claims made
by the battery of top lawyers fielded by the
managements. We hold the recommendations
of the wage board are valid, based on genuine
and acceptable considerations and there is no
valid ground for interference (by the court), the
Chief Justice who wrote the unanimous judgment
said in deciding on the managements petitions.
 1.4 The working journalists and other
employees unions including the NUJ(I) were
represented in the court by senior advocate
and noted human rights champion Mr. Colin
Gonzalves. The unions fought under the
banner of the Confederation of All Unions
and were ably and determinately led by Mr.
M. S. Yadav and his team from the PTI
Federation. Mr. Yadav is the General
Secretary of the Confederation also.
1.5 From the NUJ(I) side, Dr. N. K. Trikha was a
member of the Majithia Wage Board and the team
arguing the case before the Board was led by our
past president Mr. Rajendra Prabhu and consisted of
(late) M. D. Gangwar, Mr. Hari Om, Mr. Ashok Malik
with assistance from several other members and
state units and the office staff of the NUJ(I). Mr. Ravi
Meenakshisundaram in Chennai provided legal help.
NUJ(I) closely worked with Mr. Yadav in defending
the case in the apex court and in assisting senior
advocate Mr. Gonzalves in his most able
presentation of the workers case against a battery
of senior advocates employed by the petitioner
managements.
1.6 All credit to Mr. Gonzalves and Mr. Yadav. Legal
assistance in the court also came from advocate Mr.
Pal and advocate and trade unionist Mr. Parmanand
Pandey. In a petition by the unions during the
pendency of the case, on the contempt of court by the
managements, senior advocate Mr. Krishnamani
appeared for our side. We are grateful to him also. Mr.
Bharat Bhushan advocate also assisted our side during
the hearings. The PTI federation bore the major brunt
of the gathering of resource for conducting the case
and also for gaining access to various documents and
approaching government and political party officials to
shore up workers case. The Government strongly
defended the Notification through the learned Solicitor
General Mr. Mohan Parasar assisted by..
1.7 The court said the new pay scales and other
allowances notified by the Government on November 11
based on the recommendations of the Majithia Wage
Boards will be applicable from the date of notification (11
months after the recommendations were submitted). The
arrears should be paid within a year in four equal
installments and continued to pay revised wages from
April 2014 onwards. The specific order calling on the
owners to pay the wages as per the new wage scales
etc., leaves no room for the newspaper and news agency
establishments to evade payment on one pretext or the
other which they were resorting to earlier, the NUJ(I)
finds. This also obviates need for any further agitation
by the unions to get the Notified benefits implemented,
as non-implementation will be liable to be interpreted as
contempt of the apex court, according to us.
 1.8 The NUJ(I) also finds from the verdict that
the managements will have to pay the so called
part time employed journalists the benefits as
recommended by the Board and notified by the
Government. This will considerably provide
some relief to this most suffering section among
working journalists. The NUJ(I), it may be
recalled, had told the Majithia Board that in effect
all so called part timers were actually full time on
the vigil for news break in their area and
responsible to file the story anytime day or night.
 Here are the highlights of the
apex courts verdict:
2. On the vires of the Working Journalists
(conditions of service and other
miscellaneous provisions) Act:
In the light of the aforesaid discussion,
we are of the opinion that the challenge
as to the vires of the Act on the premise of
its being ultra vires of the Constitution
and violation of fundamental rights is
wholly unfounded, baseless and
completely untenable.
 On the newspaper industry being
discriminated against:

3. The contention of the petitioners

that though the newspaper industry
may be growing, the growth of the
electronic media is relatively
exponential, in fact, substantiates
the very necessity of why a wage
board for working journalists and
other newspaper employees of the
newspaper industry should exist.
4. On the complaint about the improper
constitution of the Wage Boards:
On behalf of the petitioners it was contented
that there was a defect in the constitution of the
wage boards as Mr. K. M. Sahni and Mr. Prasanna
Kumar were not independent members, this
fatally violates the constitution and proceedings
of the wage boards. merely because Shri. K. M.
Sahni was a part of the Government that took the
decision to set up the wage boards does not
automatically follow that he ceased to be an
independent member of the wage boards. We
are satisfied that Shri. K. M. Sahni is an
independent member of the boards and cannot
be considered to be biased in any manner.
 4.1 On the objections to Mr. Prasanna Kumars
membership, the court observed: It is well
established that mere apprehension of bias is not
enough and there must be cogent evidence available
on record to come to the conclusion. The contention
of the petitioners alleging bias against independent
members of the wage boards being biased merely on
their past status, is entirely baseless in law and
amounts to imputing motives. Further the petitioners
have nowhere established or even averred that the
independent members are guilty of legal bias as
expressed in (quotes case law)
 On functioning of the
Wage Boards:

5. On perusal of the materials available , we are

satisfied that the wage boards have functioned in a
fully balanced manner. Besides, it is a fact that the
petitioners had challenged the constitution of the
wage boards before the High Court of Delhi;
admittedly the High Court declined to grant interim
relief.It is also pertinent to take note of the fact
that the petitioners have opted for challenging the
independence of the nominated independent
members only after the recommendations of the
wage boards were notified by the Central
Government
 6. ON irregularity of procedure
Commenting on the managements complaint that the
Majithia boards prepared their report In a hasty manner
and subsequently the recommendations have been
accepted by the Central Govt. without proper hearing
or affording opportunity to all stakeholders. , the
court noted the various opportunities given to the
employers as well as their refusal to provide the called
for data and said:
We are of the view that the petitioners cannot be
allowed to take advantage of their own wrong and
impugn the recommendations of the wage boards as not
being based on their data when they eluded to submit
the said data in the first place.
7.On the allegation of wrong procedure and
lack of independent functioning of the
boards:
After going through the record of
proceedings and various written
communications , we are fully satisfied
that the wage boards proceedings have
been conducted and carried out in a
legitimate approach and no decision of the
wage boards is perceived to have been
taken unilaterally or arbitrarily..we
find no irregularity in the procedure
adopted by the impugned wage boards.
 On extraneous factors
and Capacity to Pay:
8. After perusing the relevant documents we
are satisfied that comprehensive and detailed
study has been carried out by the wage
boards by collecting all the relevant material
information for the purpose of wage revision.
The recommendations are arrived at after
verifying the pros and cons of various
methods in the process and principles of wage
revision in the modern era. It cannot be held
that the wage structure recommended by the
Majithia wage boards is unreasonable.
 On the objections regarding News
Agencies Wage Revision:
9. Noting the version given by the
respondents ( govt. and PTI union and
other federations) that the question of
capacity to pay of the news agencies was
separately considered the court observed:-
(the courts) interference is allowed to a limited
extent to examine the question as to whether
the wage board has considered the capacity to
pay of the news agencies. It would be
inapposite for the court to question the decision
of the specialized board on merits when the
board was constituted for this sole purpose.
 On the objections to variable
pay and other concepts in the
recommendations:
10.The managements had characterized the concept
of variable pay as totally unreasonable , irrational
and places extra and unnecessary burden on the
newspaper establishments. They also alleged
that there was complete non-application of mind
to insert the so-called variable pay concept.

The respondents (the unions) had pointed out that

this variable pay concept was not new and was
subsumed in the Manisana Wage Board
recommendations; only the terminology differed.
 The court observed:-
We have carefully scrutinized all the
details. It is clear that the
recommendations of the Sixth Pay
Commission had NOT been blindly imported/
relied upon by the wage board. The
concept of variable pay contained in the
Sixth Central Pay Commission has been
incorporated into the wage board
recommendations only to ensure that the
wages of the newspaper employees are at
par with the employees working in the other
government sectors. Such incorporation
was made by the Majithia wage board after
careful consideration, in order to ensure
 The court observed:-
The court also justified
grant of 100 per cent
neutralization for DA
rejecting contention of the
managements that a
reference to the decision
before 1995 is irrelevant.
 Other issues:
11. On the charge of non- incorporation of regional
differences in the emoluments, the court held that it
was satisfied the board had followed certain well
laid down principles and norms in its
recommendations.

On the charge that the board had in recommending

higher pay scale after the top rung had been
reached it was going into promotion that was
beyond its scope, the court held that this was not so
and was only a matter of prioritization after
completion of certain number of years.
 Operative part
12. In view of all these the court held that
the recommendations of the wage boards
are valid in law, based on genuine and
acceptable considerations and there is no
valid ground for interference under
Article 32 of the Constitution of India..
After dismissing with no order on costs
the numerous petitions of different
managements, the court observed:-
 The Court Observed:-
The wages as revised/determined
shall be payable from 11. 11. 2011
(that is, the date of notification which
was 11 months after the boards gave
their report). All the arrears up to
March 2014 shall be paid to all
eligible persons in four equal
installments within a period of a year
from today and continue to pay the
revised wages from April 2014