Allahabad High Court Fines Jagran Prakashan Ltd. For Denying Wage Board Benefits; Rejects Review Applications

A Bench of Justice Pankaj Bhatia noted that Petitioner Company had preferred an appeal and a revision petition after the initial judgment imposed a cost on them.

“This Court had given the judgment on 27.04.2023 wherein a cost of Rs.25,000/- (Twenty Five Thousand) was also imposed, the applicants have successfully avoided the implementation of the award and the judgment by filing an appeal which was not maintainable before this Court and after having failed in the said appeal, have filed the review application.”

On August 11, 2023, the Court had heard arguments and reserved judgment on review applications by the petitioner regarding a previous judgment from April 27, 2023. The petitioner is a "Newspaper Establishment" under Section 2(d) of the Act. This establishment, incorporated as M/s Jagran Prakashan Ltd., publishes the Hindi newspaper "Dainik Jagran" and various other publications nationwide through its offices/branches/agencies.

Advocate Chandra Bhan Gupta appeared for the Applicants and Advocate Man Mohan Singh appeared for the Respondents.

The petitioner argued that the court made errors in not deciding other issues and referring to Section 12 inaccurately in the judgment. The petitioner claimed that the classification of the newspaper establishment was wrong and contradicted their own statements. The respondents opposed the review application, and their arguments were noted in the same order.

The Court addressed the arguments. It clarified that the issues raised by the petitioner were already addressed in the previous judgment. The court had ruled that any agreement that provided benefits lower than those recommended by the Wage Board would violate the law.

The Court also clarified that the reference to Section 12 was accurate and rejected the petitioner's argument about classification.

Regarding the newspaper establishment's classification, the Court rejected the argument that the respondents had claimed a different classification. The Court emphasized that the affidavit by the respondents had not been challenged, and there was no evidence to support reclassification.

The Court criticized the petitioner for avoiding the implementation of the Wage Board recommendations and imposed a cost on the petitioner.

“The review application on merits as well as the conduct of the petitioner deserves to be rejected and is accordingly rejected with a cost of Rs.10,000/- (Ten Thousand) to be paid to each of the employees who have filed a claim petition.”

The review application was rejected. The Court also rejected another review application related to a separate writ petition with similar issues, noting that the issues were common.

Cause Title: Jagran Prakashan Ltd v. Aman Kumar Singh & Ors., 2023:AHC:174581

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