The Centre for Labour Studies at National Law School of India University is organising a Webinar on ‘Bangalore Water Supply Reference: Reaffirmation, Reformulation or Uncertainty?’. The event will be held on Saturday, 29 August 2026 at 5:30 P.M.

About the Webinar

Late last week, the Supreme Court delivered its much-anticipated judgment on the correctness of the reference made in Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board v. A. Rajappa, the landmark 1978 judgment that expansively interpreted “industry” under Section 2(j) of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947. The nine-judge Constitution Bench’s judgment comes at a particularly significant moment, following the repeal of the Industrial Disputes Act and the coming into force of the Industrial Relations Code, 2020 in November 2025.

At the heart of the reference was the correctness of the “triple test” laid down in Bangalore Water Supply for determining what constitutes an “industry”. The judgment has, however, generated considerable debate about what the Court has actually decided. While some commentators have read the judgment as substantially reaffirming the Bangalore Water Supply framework, others have understood the Court as reformulating the test. Yet others have pointed to the multiple opinions and the absence of a clear majority on the proposed reformulation to argue that the precise legal position remains difficult to discern.

This webinar will take stock of these competing interpretations and unpack the different opinions of the nine judges, examining what the judgment means for the definition of “industry”, pending disputes under the Industrial Disputes Act, and the interpretation of the Industrial Relations Code going forward.

The discussion will bring together practising labour lawyers from Karnataka and Delhi, alongside academics from the Centre for Labour Studies at National Law School of India University (NLSIU), to critically examine the judgment and its implications for labour jurisprudence and workers’ rights.

Details of the Webinar

Date: 29th August 2026, Saturday
Time: 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM
Link: Microsoft Teams meeting link
Meeting ID: 398 579 960 446 914
Passcode: 8Mu644zD

Details of the Speakers

Professor Babu Mathew is Visiting Faculty at NLSIU, and President of the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) for the State of Karnataka. He is a pioneering member of the Centre for Labour Studies at NLSIU, and he has long been a part of the trade union movement and various other social movements taking up issues of bonded labour, child labour, displacement and destruction of the livelihoods of the marginalised.

Maitreyi Krishnan is a Bengaluru based Advocate practicing on the labour side representing workmen and unions. She is the State Secretary AICCTU. Bangalore Secretary, CPI( ML) Liberation. She is also the president of All India Lawyers Association for Justice (AILAJ).

Jawahar Raja is a Delhi-based advocate who practices extensively in labor, service, and criminal law matters before the Delhi High Court. He represented New Trade Union Initiative (NTUI) as an intervenor in the BWSSB Reference before the Supreme Court.

Dr. Saurabh Bhattacharjee is Registrar at NLSIU. He is presently also the Co-Director of the Centre for Labour Studies at NLSIU, and teaches labour law at the university. He has served on the Government of West Bengal’s Committee to Review Vagrancy Laws and on the Government of Karnataka’s Working Group to frame rules under the Karnataka Platform-Based Gig Workers (Social Security and Welfare) Act, 2025. His work has been cited by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Labour and Employment in its Report on the Code on Wages Bill.

The webinar will be moderated by Vijetha Ravi, Assistant Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Centre for Labour Studies at NLSIU. Each speaker will speak for 20 minutes, and then we will open up the session for Q&A.