CHENNAI: A division bench of the Madras High Court has dismissed an appeal filed by the All India Defence Employees Federation (AIDEF) challenging the union government’s decision to convert the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) into a corporate entity fully owned by the government.
The appeal was filed challenging the decision to corporatise the OFB on a specific ground that the decision was taken on June 16, 2021 even before the conciliation officer, against whom an industrial dispute was raised following a strike by the employees, decided the dispute as “conciliation failure” on June 18, 2021.
The bench comprising justices R Suresh Kumar and Hemant Chandangoudar, in a recent order said “these kinds of hyper-technical objections, normally, cannot be accepted” to stall the execution of such a decision of the government pertaining to national security.
The order passed by the conciliation officer should reach the appropriate government, only then it could be construed that the decision on the failure report has reached the government and could also be construed that the conciliation proceedings is not pending, the bench noted.
“When major policy decisions are taken by the government, with regard to defence production units, it is not a mere administrative decision of an employer but a policy decision of the union government concerning national security,” the judges noted.
Fully agreeing with the judgment of the Delhi High Court in a similar case challenging the corporatisation, the bench said the one and only objection raised by the counsel for the petitioner, “in no way would stand before the policy decision of the government” for aforesaid special reasons and circumstances in the context of the country’s security.
It dismissed the appeal stating that the single judge’s order is to be sustained. The AIDEF filed a writ petition in the Madras High Court in 2021 challenging the centre’s decision to convert the OFB into one or more than one corporate entity 100% owned by the government and convert the ordnance factories into defence public sector undertakings with 41 units as per the June 16, 2021 decision of the union cabinet.
Subsequently, the Department of Defence Production issued an office memorandum on June 21, 2021.
