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Our Legal Correspondent

Chennai, May 6 The Madras High Court has held that the Pondicherry (Puducherry) Housing Board, a Union Territory undertaking, has to pay its employees the statutory minimum bonus guaranteed under Section 10 of the Payment of Bonus Act, 1965, from accounting year 1997-98.

However, while paying the statutory minimum bonus, the board was entitled to adjust any ex gratia/gift already paid to the employees.

Mr Justice K. Chandru – while allowing writ petitions preferred by the Housing Board Employees Union and Staff Union, challenging the stand of the board that employees were not eligible for bonus for 1997-98 and that they would be paid only the gift as announced by the Government of the Union Territory – ruled that if workmen were aggrieved and wanted something more than statutory minimum bonus, the only remedy open to them was to raise an industrial dispute in terms of Section 22 of the Act.

The petitioners contended that the housing board was not exempted from paying the bonus under Section 32(v)© of the Act. Likewise, the TN Housing Board too did not get exemption for payment of bonus. On behalf of Pondicherry Housing Board, it was submitted that the exemption under the section was available to the board as it was an institution not intended for profit.

The Judge ruled that if Section 34(3) of TWAD Board Act was made as a conclusive proof to deny exemption pleaded by that board, both by the Division Bench and the Supreme Court in the TWAD Board’s case, then automatically the plea of exemption now sought to be advanced by the Pondicherry Housing Board must also necessarily fall on account of Section 73(1) of Pondicherry Housing Board Act, 1973, which was in pari materia with the TWAD Board Act.

As the petitioners were only seeking for a statutory minimum bonus under Section 10, there was no necessity to drive them to raise an industrial dispute regarding the quantum of bonus payable to employees, the Judge held.

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