Forty-eight years after a seven-judge Bench of the Supreme Court laid down an expansive interpretation of the term “industry” under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, a nine-judge Constitution Bench led by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant will commence hearings to examine the correctness of the 1978 judgment from March 17.According to the Supreme Court’s cause list for March 17, the other judges on the Bench are Justice BV Nagarathna, Justice PS Narasimha, Justice Dipankar Datta, Justice Ujjal Bhuyan, Justice Satish Chandra Sharma, Justice Joymalya Bagchi, Justice Alok Aradhe and Justice Vipul M Pancholi.The Bench is scheduled to begin hearing the matter on Tuesday and conclude proceedings on Wednesday.In its 1978 verdict in ‘Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board versus A Rajappa’, the seven-judge Bench held that any systematic activity organised through cooperation between employer and employee for the production or distribution of goods and services could fall within the definition of “industry”, even if the organisation was not engaged in profit-making.The Constitution Bench will now examine whether the sweeping interpretation of “industry” in the judgment authored by Justice VR Krishna Iyer requires reconsideration.It will also consider whether social welfare schemes and other activities undertaken by government departments or their instrumentalities could be construed as “industrial activities” for the purposes of Section 2 of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947.