Rajasthan State Road Transport Corporation v. Krishna Kant

The Standing Orders Act takes the terms of employment in a large establishment, requires them to be defined, certified and published, and gives the Certifying Officer a power to modify them. After all that, are certified standing orders law?

This is the theoretical head of the module, and it is the question most often asked in the abstract. Krishna Kant answers it directly, and the answer is a careful middle position that a student who has only read the Act would be unlikely to guess: standing orders are binding conditions of service, and not subordinate legislation.

This course states the decision for the reasoning it supplies on the legal nature of certified standing orders, and records no further facts for it; none should be supplied from elsewhere.

The Supreme Court reasoned in these terms:

"The Act does not say that on such certification, the Standing Orders acquire statutory effect or become part of the statute. It can certainly not be suggested that by virtue of certification, they get metamorphosed into delegated/subordinate legislation. Though these Standing Orders are undoubtedly binding upon both the employer and the employees and constitute the conditions of service of the employees, it appears difficult to say, on principle, that they have statutory force."

So: binding, and constitutive of the conditions of service; but not statutory, and not delegated legislation.

First, look for the conferral and find none. The argument for statutory force has to rest on something in the Act saying that certification gives it. The Act does not say so. Certification is a process of scrutiny and approval; it is not a clause of incorporation.

Second, test the delegated-legislation analogy and reject it. Delegated legislation is made by an authority exercising a rule-making power conferred by the legislature, and it binds the world. Standing orders originate with the employer, who drafts them, and they bind the parties to a particular employment relationship. Certification screens them; it does not convert their author into a delegate of Parliament.

Third, having denied statutory force, do not empty them of effect. They are undoubtedly binding on both sides and constitute the conditions of service. The denial is of one particular legal character, not of obligation.

The consequences are what make the distinction examinable. As conditions of service, standing orders bind the parties and are enforceable as terms of the employment relationship. But they are not law of general application; they cannot be struck down as ultra vires a rule-making power; and their breach is not automatically a breach of statute — though section 13(2) makes contravention an offence. That last qualification is the part candidates leave out, and leaving it out makes the answer look like a denial that standing orders matter.

This is the authority for the question whether certified standing orders are law, and for any question on their legal nature, their binding character or their enforceability. Quote the passage, then state the two-sided result — binding conditions of service, not subordinate legislation — and then give the four consequences, ending with section 13(2).

Set it against the certification machinery to show why the answer is not obvious: draft standing orders are submitted within six months under section 3(1); they must provide for every applicable Schedule matter and conform, so far as practicable, to the model; they are circulated to the trade union or the workmen with fifteen days for objections under section 5(1); the parties are heard under section 5(2); certification follows within seven days under section 5(3); an appeal lies within thirty days under section 6(1); they come into operation under section 7; they are registered under section 8; and they are posted at the entrance and in every department, in English and in the language of the majority, under section 9. A process that public-looking still does not produce a statute, and saying why is the whole answer.

It disposes of the argument that a certified standing order may be challenged as ultra vires a rule-making power, and of the opposite argument that standing orders are a mere unilateral employer document with no binding force.

It does not decide what the Certifying Officer may or may not modify, nor any question about the content of the Schedule matters, nor the scope of the Act, which under section 1(3) applies to every industrial establishment employing one hundred or more workmen, or employing that number on any day of the preceding twelve months, with a proviso letting the appropriate Government extend it on notice to a smaller specified number.

A caution on citation. No report reference is settled for this decision in this course. Give the name and the passage; do not supply a citation from elsewhere.