'Industry' Definition Reference : Live Updates From Supreme Court 9-Judge Bench Hearing
LIVELAW NEWS NETWORK
17 March 2026 10:20 AM IST
A 9-judge bench of the Supreme Court will hear today the reference on the correctness of the definition of “industry” given by then Justice VR Krishna Iyer in the 1978 decision in Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board v. A. Rajappa.
A bench comprising Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, Justices BV Nagarathna, PS Narasimha, Dipankar Datta, Ujjal Bhuyan, Satish Chandra Sharma, Joymalya Bagchi, Alok Aradhe and Vipul M. Pancholi is hearing the matter.
In the Bangalore Water Supply case, a seven-judge bench had laid down a sweeping interpretation of the term “industry” under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947. The Court held that any systematic activity organised by cooperation between employer and employee for the production or distribution of goods and services could fall within the definition of industry, even if the organisation was not engaged in profit making.
The correctness of this decision was doubted in a 2002 appeal. The matter was ultimately referred to a 9-judge bench in 2017, since the Bangalore Water Supply case was rendered by a 9-judge bench.
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Live Updates
- 17 March 2026 3:16 PM IST
J Joymalya: would it not in effect give a retrospective operation to the labour code when the legislature gave operative to the labour code from a posterior date of its passing, that is 2025? in order to interpret or revisit the judgment, use 2020 as interpretative rules, would be not fall in relislating a prospective law as a retrospective law?
- 17 March 2026 3:04 PM IST
2. the concept of sovereign functions ought not be understood in a narrow colonial sense but must be interpreted in the context of constitutionally government democratic state. In the judgments or till such time, how it has been understood, that can't be the approach that has to be understood in the indian context