Madhya Pradesh High Court: Prakash Shrivastava, J. allowed the petition of the petitioner and held that in the absence of consent or in case of opposition by a party before the Labour Court, the other party cannot be permitted to be represented through an advocate as per Section 36(3) and (4) of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947.
The petitioner has challenged the order of the Labour Court dated 8-10-2012, whereby the objection of the petitioner in respect of representation of the respondent in the proceedings before the Labour Court through the advocate has been rejected.
The facts of the instant case is that the reference has been made to the Labour Court under Section 10 of the Industrial Disputes Act in respect of retrenchment of the petitioner and in the proceedings before the Labour Court, the petitioner had raised an objection that the respondent cannot be allowed to be represented through the advocate as the petitioner has not appointed any advocate to represent him and in this regard has placed reliance upon Section 36(3) & (4) of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 and the Labour Court considering Section 30 of the Advocates Act has rejected the said objection.
The High Court held that since the petitioner has not consented to it and opposed it, the respondent-employer cannot be permitted to be represented before the Labour Court through the Advocate. In this regard, the Court placed reliance on the judgments of Uttam Kumar Pardasani v. Petcare Divin of Tetragon (P) Ltd. in Civil Appeal No. 561/11 and Itnas Pharmaceutical Ltd. v. Yogendra Singh Chouhan in WP No.6445/15.[Prakash Meena v. Ultratech Cement Ltd., 2019 SCC OnLine MP 1788, decided on 25-07-2019]
