AIR 1970 SUPREME COURT 2042 ::1970 LAB. I. C. 1632 ::19 FacLR 325 ::1970 2 LabLJ 403 ::38 FJR 1 ::1970 2 SCR 600

Supreme Court Of India

(From Mysore : AIR 1968 Mys 156)

Hon'ble Judge(s): S. M. Sikri, G. K. Mitter, K. S. Hegde, A. N. Ray, P. Jaganmohan Reddy , JJJ

(A) Constitution of India , Art.14— Power conferred under S. 5 (1), Minimum Wages Act is not arbitrary or unguided. It is true that the procedural inequality, if real and substantial is also within the vice of Article 14. But then, before a power can be held to be bad the same should be an unguided and unregulated one. But if a power is given to an authority to have recourse to different procedures under different circumstances, that power cannot be considered as an arbitrary power. Power under Section 5 (1) Minimum Wages Act is given to the State Government and not to any petty official. The State Government can be trusted to exercise that power to further the purposes of the Act. It is not the law that the guidance for the exercise of a power can be gathered from the circumstances that led to the enactment of the law in question i. e. the mischief that was intended to be remedied, the preamble to the Act or even from the scheme of the Act. The legislative policy is enumerated with sufficient clearness in the @page-SC2043 Minimum Wages Act. The Government is merely charged with the duty of implementing that policy. There is no basis for saying that the legislature had abdicated any of its legislative functions. The legislature has prescribed two different procedures for collecting the necessary data. One contained in Section 5 ....