Labour Rights in India: Decoding the Supreme Court's BWSSB Ruling and the New Industrial Relations Code

What was the Supreme Court's recent ruling on the BWSSB Reference?

On August 20, 2026, the Supreme Court of India delivered its judgment on the long-pending Reference concerning the correctness of the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board vs A. Rajappa (BWSSB), 1978 judgment. The Reference primarily sought to re-examine the 'Triple Test' for determining whether an activity falls within the definition of 'industry' under Section 2(j) of the now-repealed Industrial Disputes (ID) Act, 1947 (Source: The Hindu, August 25, 2026). A key aspect of the ruling was the acknowledgement by Justices D. Datta, U. Bhuyan, B.V. Nagarathna, and P.S. Narasimha that the Reference had become largely 'otiose' or academic.

Justices D. Datta and U. Bhuyan held that the 'reference requires no answer,' while Justice B.V. Nagarathna found the exercise 'unnecessary and only academic in nature.' Justice P.S. Narasimha concurred, stating that while an authoritative interpretation was compelling at the time of the Reference, 'such a determination has now become unnecessary, with the repeal of the said provision' (Source: The Hindu, August 25, 2026). This stance was largely due to the Industrial Relations Code (IRC), 2020, having been brought into force from November 21, 2025, which repealed the ID Act, 1947.

Even the opinion written by the Chief Justice of India (CJI) for four judges, while attempting to reformulate the Triple Test, described its reformulation as merely 'hypothetical' and expressly stated that it would not apply to any pending case. The CJI's opinion further clarified that since the ID Act, 1947, has been repealed, there can be no future cases under it. The reformulated test would not alter pending disputes, which would continue to be governed by the BWSSB framework (Source: The Hindu, August 25, 2026). The four questions framed by the nine-judge Bench on February 16, 2026, concerned only Section 2(j) of the ID Act, not the interpretation of Section 2(p) of the IRC, 2020.