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 on Tuesday commenced hearing to examine the correctness of the 1978 judgment.The nine-judge Constitution Bench – which includes 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 – is expected to conclude the hearing on Wednesday.As Attorney General R Venkataramani commenced his submissions on behalf of the Union of India, Justice Nagarathna pointed out that India had reforms of 1991 which brought liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation (LPG) and many functions earlier performed by the State were now being performed by the private sector.“Then what should be the scope of the definition of ‘industry’? Should it still be very expansive or restrictive or balance has to be struck? We are in 2026, we had many years of LPG, which is so important for a woman also,” Justice Nagarathna said in a veiled reference to LPG cylinders’ supply constraints due to the US-Israel war on Iran and the latter’s decision to enforce a naval blockade of the strait of Hormuz.“There is no shortage of LPG,” Venkataramani asserted before the Bench, which went on to hear legal arguments from the Attorney General.Some of the senior advocates that the new Labour Code has already come into force and it has been challenged as well.In its 1978 verdict in ‘Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board versus A. Rajappa’, the seven-judge Bench held that any systematic activity organised by cooperation between employer and employee for production or distribution of goods and services could fall within the definition of ‘industry’, even if the organisation was not engaged in profit making.Now, the nine-judge Bench is examining if the sweeping interpretation of “industry” given in the 1978 judgment authored by Justice VR Krishna Iyer needed reconsideration.On February 16, the court had formulated broad issues to be adjudicated by the nine-judge Constitution Bench.One of the issues to be examined was if the Industrial Disputes Act, 1982, and the Industrial Relations Code, 2020, had any legal impact on the interpretation of the expression ‘industry’ as contained in the principal Act.The nine-judge Bench would also consider if social welfare activities and schemes or other enterprises undertaken by the government departments or their instrumentalities could be construed to be “industrial activities” for the purpose of Section 2 of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947.Earlier, a three-judge Bench, in its 1996 judgment, had relied on a 1978 seven-judge Bench verdict and had held that the social forestry department was covered by the definition of the word “industry”. Later, in 2001, another Bench took a different view on the issue after which the matter was referred to a five-judge Bench to resolve an “apparent conflict” between the two decisions.In May 2005, a five-judge Constitution Bench referred the matter to a larger Bench on the interpretation of “industry” in Section 2 of Industrial Disputes Act, 1947.A seven-judge Constitution Bench led by the then CJI TS Thakur in 2017 said that the appeals be placed before a Bench of nine judges keeping in view the “serious and wide-ranging implications” of the issue.