SC: No contempt for FCI regularising labour under Direct Payment System—Tribunal award did not mandate Departmental Labour absorption
Case Name: The Workmen through the Convener, FCI Labour Federation v. Ravuthar Dawood Naseem & Ors.
Citation: Contempt Petition (Civil) No. 404 of 2019 in Civil Appeal No. 10511 of 2011 (with connected petitions)
Date of Judgment: 19 May 2020
Bench: Justice A.M. Khanwilkar and Justice Dinesh Maheshwari
Held: The Supreme Court dismissed multiple contempt petitions alleging non-compliance with its earlier judgment of 20 August 2018 directing regularisation of Food Corporation of India (FCI) labourers, holding that there was no wilful disobedience since the 1992-93 industrial awards merely required “regularisation and departmentalisation” without specifying absorption under any particular system. FCI’s act of regularising eligible workmen under its Direct Payment System (DPS) was consistent with its extant 1991 policy, and in absence of explicit judicial direction mandating inclusion in the Departmental Labour System (DLS), contempt jurisdiction could not be invoked.
Summary: The petitions arose from long-standing industrial disputes initiated by FCI daily-wage and contract workers across southern India seeking regularisation after abolition of contract labour under notifications issued under the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970. The Industrial Tribunal had in Awards of 1997-98 ordered FCI to “regularise and departmentalise” the affected workmen, which was upheld by the Madras and Kerala High Courts and affirmed by the Supreme Court in August 2018. The workmen later moved contempt petitions, alleging FCI had disobeyed directions by absorbing them under DPS rather than DLS, which carried higher service benefits.
FCI defended that DPS had existed since 1973, well before the awards, and was the operative policy framework since 1991 for all post-abolition regularisations. The Court accepted that the References and awards did not require regularisation under any specific labour system and that over 19,000 workmen were serving under DPS nationwide. Citing Ram Kishan v. Tarun Bajaj (2014) 16 SCC 204, the Bench held that contempt lies only where disobedience is wilful, deliberate, and contrary to clear directions. Since the award and appellate judgments were silent on the precise mode of absorption, and departmentalisation could validly include DPS, the element of contumacious conduct was absent.
Decision: All contempt petitions were dismissed. The Court held that FCI had complied with its obligation to regularise the workers under its established policy and that no case of deliberate disobedience was made out.