Diplomatic missions cannot claim exemption from labour laws with respect to employees from receiving State: Madras HC

Foreign diplomatic missions in India cannot claim any exemption from following the labour and social security laws of the country, at least with respect to the Indians employed in their High Commissions and Consulates here, the Madras High Court has held.

Foreign diplomatic missions in India cannot claim any exemption from following the labour and social security laws of the country, at least with respect to the Indians employed in their High Commissions and Consulates here, the Madras High Court has held.

Justice D. Bharatha Chakravarthy also made it clear that Indians serving in foreign diplomatic missions here need not obtain the Centre’s permission, under Section 86 of the Code of Civil Procedure, before approaching an industrial tribunal against their employers.

The judge said, Parliament had enacted the Diplomatic Relations (Vienna Convention) Act, 1972, to give a force of law to a convention adopted by India at the United Nations Conference on Diplomatic Intercourse and Immunities held in Vienna on April 14, 1961.

Article 33 of the Convention clearly states that only foreign nationals serving in a diplomatic mission would be exempt from the social security laws of the receiving State. “Therefore, the exemption provided for in the Article is not applicable to the nationals of the receiving State,” the judge underlined.

He went on to write: “In respect of such employees to whom the exemption provided in the Article does not apply, the diplomatic agents shall observe obligations which the social security provisions of the receiving State impose upon employers. In such view of the matter, no immunity can be claimed by the management.”

The judge also recalled the Supreme Court to have held in 1963 that industrial tribunals could not be deemed to be a court for the purpose of obtaining the Centre’s express permission before suing a diplomatic mission, and that employees could raise labour disputes against a foreign sovereign too.

Justice Chakravarthy, therefore, allowed a writ petition filed by T. Senthilkumari, who had served as Consular Assistant at the Deputy High Commission of Sri Lanka in Chennai between 2008 and 2018 before being retrenched by paying just one month’s salary and no other compensation as required under Section 25F of the Industrial Disputes (ID) Act, 1947.