The prayer in the writ petition is to whether the Tamil Nadu Government would invoke his powers under Section 3(2) of the Tamil Nadu (National, Festival and Special Holidays) Act, 1958 and declare the period of lockdown as holidays.
26.04.2020
The writ petition was filed by S.Ravindran, Senior Advocate, as
a Public Interest Litigation before the Madras High Court.
The prayer in the writ petition is to whether the Tamil Nadu
Government would invoke his powers under Section 3(2) of the
Tamil Nadu (National, Festival and Special Holidays) Act, 1958
and declare the period of lockdown as holidays. ( copy of the
writ petition affidavit attached)
The Government of Tamil Nadu through its Deputy Secretary,
Labour and Employment Department, B.Chitra, filed counter
affidavit stating that the above Act does not contain any
provision to declare paid holiday to employees of industrial
establishments on any emergency on special circumstances for
more than a day and that therefore, the State Government is
not empowered to notify the lockdown periods from 24.03.2020
to 14.04.2020 as special holidays due to the prevailing epidemic
situation ( copy of the counter affidavit attached )
During the course of hearing held through video conference on
23.04.2020, addressed the larger issue projected by the
petitioner, namely, the response of the State Government in
terms of the provisions of the Disaster Management Act, 2005,
in order to maintain industrial peace soon after the lockdown is
lifted and conflicting interests of the industry and employees are
projected. The Division Bench took judicial notice of the fact
that Tamil Nadu is a leading manufacturing State in the
Country and therefore the industries should run efficiently and
profitably.
In the above context, the Division Bench called upon the
Additional Advocate General, S.R.Rajagopal, assisted by
V.Jayaprakash Narayanan, Government pleader to come up
with the response of the State Government in this regard. In
view of the larger issues of public interest projected by the
petitioner S.Ravindran, Senior Advocate, the Division Bench,
suo motu impleaded the Ministry of Home Affairs, Union of
India, Employers’ Federation of South India, Chennai and the
