B C P P Mazdoor v/s. NTPC and Others
- Manohar Singh Rawal
- May 24, 2020
Content :
The present appeal lies from the impugned dismissal of the High Court. In the present case, the employees of NTPC, aggrieved by the High Court’s dismissal approached the supreme court for an appeal. There are primarily three parties involved namely the employees, the NTPC (a government undertaking), and the BCPP a subsidiary unit of BALCO(a private undertaking). The primary issue was who was the true employer of the employees working under NTPC.
The employees claimed that they were employed under NTPC. The process of interview was initiated by NTPC by way of advertisement that clearly stated, “NTPC Ltd. requires persons in the following categories for its Korba Super Thermal Power Project and BALCO Captive Power Project” . The entire process of employment right from recruitment, to training and payment of wages was undertaken by NTPC.
The management of NTPC and BCPP/BALCO contended otherwise that, the employees in question who were recruited for the non-executive position were employed for BCPP/BALCO and not NTPC. They further claimed that the employees were recruited to work for BCPP to begin with, and NTPC was merely a management agency who looked after the administration of the company because of lack technical expertise of BALCO.
It was important to decide the question of employment as the nature of their employment would drastically differ if employment was either under NTPC or BALCO. Being an employee of NTPC would grant the employees a governmental job posting which is highly revered in the society and provides great incentive with job security. Whereas if the court decided that they were the employees of BCPP/BALCO, then the employment would be private in nature. A private job in our country, does not offer such incentives and job security as the government job.
