MORE THAN TWELVE YEARS AFTER an incident at Maruti Plant in Manesar, which led to the death of an HR manager, the dismissal of over five hundred workers and numerous arrests, on November 7, 2025, Gurugram’s Industrial Tribunal-cum-Labour Court issued a judgment denying reinstatement to a Maruti worker.
Crucially, there was no independent evidence connecting the appellant, Ram Niwas, to the 2012 incident and his name was missing from the FIR and the Special Investigation Team’s report. Presiding Officer Kumud Gugnani who authored the award placed emphasis on the management’s alleged “loss of confidence”, and the need to enforce discipline within the workforce and nation-building. An excerpt of the judgment read:
“...Nation building is the most sacred duty of every Indian in the present day trumpian world of cut throat competition. History is witness to the most glaring fact that only those economies have survived and thrived where the workforce was dressed in discipline. Were India to compete with the leading economies of the day she shall have to induce strict discipline in its workmen force. The least that may be expected of the justice delivery department is not succumbing to the oft repeated sentiment of showing empathy and compassion to the wrong doer workman and thus breeding more indiscipline under the guise of beneficial legislation.”
When in December 2025, The Leaflet spoke to Ram Niwas, he noted, “I approached the court with the hope that it would decide a basic question: whether the company followed due process in terminating me, and whether that termination was valid or invalid… I too believe in nation building. But the question is, is a nation built by its labourers or by international corporations? And why do international corporations come here in the first place, if not for the availability of cheap labour?”
Niwas believes, he said, that a nation is built by its citizens, just as a company is built by its workers, “Capital may have belonged to people like Rajiv Gandhi or Corporations like Suzuki, but it was the workers who laboured hard and made the company grow. And yet, this hard work is now treated akin to an enemy by the courts and the state.”
Interestingly, during his 2011 visit to India, Suzuki Motor Corporation CEO Osamu Suzuki had remarked that “indiscipline is not tolerated… not in Japan, not in India.”, a line of reasoning that reflects strongly in the November 2025 award. The then chairman R. C. Bhargava had also publicly asserted that the company “will not tolerate indiscipline and sabotaging of work.”
These statements were made against the backdrop of an ongoing workers’ agitation, at the time, at the Manesar plant where the workers were pressing three core demands: formal recognition of a new trade union at the plant, wage parity and benefits for contract workers, and an end to the practice of compelling workers to sign good conduct bonds.
“But what constitutes indiscipline when you are violating their constitutional right, their trade union right, and international standards of right to freedom of association and collective bargaining?,” asked Rakhi Sehgal, an independent labour and trade union researcher, speaking with The Leaflet, “You are flouting all of that and calling it indiscipline.”
In Manesar, a long brewing story of state bureaucracy and corporate power
The Manesar violence in which Niwas has been implicated in has had a long history. There are several versions of what transpired and no single account has been conclusively established. However, drawing on conversations with researchers, and workers themselves, a broad picture emerges of a workplace already strained by longstanding grievances and unequal power relations.
For decades, the Gurgaon-Manesar belt has been defined by an intimate alignment between industrial policy, state bureaucracy and corporate power. In 2011-12, workers at the Manesar plant were attempting to form an independent union because the existing Gurgaon-plant union no longer reflected their interests, particularly on issues such as the regularisation of contract and trainee workers and wages.
Between 2001-02 and 2010-11, Maruti Suzuki’s annual sales rose from about Rs. 900 crore to more than Rs. 36,000 crore, an increase of almost 400 percent, while Profit after Tax increased from Rs. 105 crore to Rs. 2,289 crore, a rise of nearly 2,200 percent. By 2010-11, Maruti alone accounted for 48 percent of Suzuki Motor Corporation’s global sales and 62 percent of its overseas sales. Still, this dramatic growth did not translate into gains for workers.
Permanent workers at Manesar earned a fixed wage between Rs 6,000 to 15,000 per month, and faced deductions of Rs 1,500 for every day of leave, regardless of accumulated entitlements. Trainees faced deductions of Rs 800 per day of leave and contract workers and apprentices exhausted their entire variable pay with just two days of leave. In contrast, the CEO’s remuneration rose from Rs 47.3 lakh in 2007-08 to Rs 2.45 crore in 2010-11, an increase of 419 percent.
Against this backdrop of high profits and wage compression, workers sought to form the independent Union to secure meaningful representation and collective bargaining rights. About 65 percent of the workforce consisted of non-permanent categories such as trainees, apprentices and contract workers who performed regular work at lower wages in violation of labour law.
Management opposed the registration of the Union from the outset, backed by the political establishment. The then Haryana Chief Minister B.S. Hooda openly stated that no new union would be allowed to register. Workers were pressured to sign a “good conduct bond” before reentering the plant, affiliating them with the long-dormant Maruti Udyog Kamgar Union instead. By the time the Maruti Manesar workers attempted to assert their constitutional right to freedom of association, industrial policy; state administration and corporate interests had already become deeply intertwined, leaving workers structurally disadvantaged and at unrest. The development that ultimately pushed matters over the edge was the July 18 incident.
What exactly happened on July 18, 2012?
On the morning of July 18, tensions escalated after a supervisor, Ramkishore Majhi, reportedly stopped a group of workers returning from their tea break and ordered them to end their boycott of the pre-shift meeting. In the exchange that followed, he is said to have used a caste slur against a permanent worker, Jiya Lal.
Both men reported the incident to their respective leadership. Instead of initiating an inquiry or engaging with the union, the management moved quickly to suspend Jiya Lal without hearing his version of events.
Workers and union representatives protested what they perceived as a one-sided action that punished the worker while shielding the supervisor. They demanded either disciplinary action against both parties or a withdrawal of the suspension until a fair discussion could take place. The management refused, and anger built through the day. A-shift workers stayed inside the plant after their shift, while B-shift workers continued production.
The exact sequence of events herein remains contested and is the subject of conflicting testimonies. However, a fire broke out on the premises resulting in the death of General Manager of Human Resources, Awanish Kumar Dev. Several managers and workers reported injuries.
A trail of mass arrests
The police response that followed was immediate and nearly 150 workers were eventually arrested over the next few weeks. Khushiram, a terminated worker, told The Leaflet in December 2025 that following these mass arrests, the remaining workers were compelled to care for the families of those detained, while also undertaking the formation of a new union and pursuing legal action. Media coverage in the days and months that followed largely refurbished the management and police narrative of mob violence.
In March 2017, the Sessions Court in Gurugram convicted 31 workers and acquitted 117 others due to lack of evidence. Of the 31 convicted, 13 union leaders and senior members received life sentences for the alleged murder of Awanish Kumar Dev.The remaining eighteen were convicted on lesser charges related to rioting and grievous hurt. The vast majority of those acquitted had already spent years in jail as undertrials.
In 2012, the company dismissed 546 permanent workers. Of these, 426 were terminated on the ground of “loss of confidence,” without any internal inquiry, and despite not being named in the Special Investigation Team’s list of accused persons. Notably, every terminated worker was issued an identical termination letter, with only the individual names and details altered, and the so called speaking orders mechanically reproduced the same allegation of “loss of confidence” across cases. Many of the workers continue to pursue reinstatement through labour courts and industrial tribunals.
It is within this long arc of post violence litigation that Ram Niwas’s case sits. Ram Niwas was a worker in the B shift and was involved in the production at the time of the incident, away from the locus of violence. Despite this, he was one of the workers dismissed by the company. His name did not figure in the FIR, the Special Investigation Team’s list of accused, or any independent witness testimonies. The sole material relied upon against him consisted of internal statements submitted by the management.
In 2017, Ram Niwas approached the High Court, which directed the lower court to conclude the proceedings within six months. The verdict was delivered on November 7 last year.
In Ram Niwas’s case, a collapse of procedural safeguards
In examining the 66-page judgment, The Leaflet consulted Senior Advocate Gayatri Singh, who observed that the tribunal had erred in two significant respects.
First, it failed to identify the role of the individual worker given that the events of July 18 were collective in nature, with over five hundred workers involved allegedly. In such situations, the law requires the employer to identify what each worker actually did.
Justice VR Krishna Iyer in Gujarat Steel Tubes Ltd. v. Gujarat Steel Tubes Mazdoor Sabha (1980), particularly held that the employer must identify the specific role of each individual worker and without clear attribution of individual responsibility, dismissal is legally unsustainable. In Ram Niwas’s case, no judicial inquiry was undertaken to establish that the terminated worker had engaged in any specific misconduct, or to differentiate his actions from those of workers who continued to be employed at the factory after the incident. The parameters used to determine which employees were to be terminated and which were to be retained were never disclosed, and remain unknown. More significantly, it was not questioned by the Tribunal. Instead, the testimonies of the management have been relied upon.
Secondly, Singh pointed out, the problem lies in the Tribunal’s acceptance of ‘loss of confidence’as the ground for dismissal. According to labour jurisprudence this should be used only in certain circumstances. The Supreme Court in Kanhaiyalal Agrawal v. Factory Manager (2001) held that loss of confidence can be invoked only when the worker who occupies a position of trust has abused that position in a way that forfeits employment and when retaining the worker would compromise the discipline or security of the workplace. Importantly, these conditions must be supported by objective facts rather than the management’s subjective opinion. No such evidence was placed on record in the present case.
“If there was a loss of confidence from the company’s side, why did it wait until July 18, the incident, to terminate us?,” Ram Niwas questioned. The workers had been protesting well before the incident in pursuit of union recognition and other workplace rights, and during this period the company had even rewarded them with gold coins. In this context, the invocation of a sudden ‘loss of confidence’ may raise questions.
Singh told The Leaflet that if any allegation was to be made, it should have been one of misconduct. Such a charge, however, would have necessitated the constitution of an internal committee and a domestic inquiry, a process the company avoided by framing the terminations instead as a case of ‘loss of confidence’.
The Supreme Court in D. K. Yadav v. J.M.A. Industries Ltd. (1993) held that dismissing a worker without giving them a chance to defend themselves violates the right to livelihood under Article 21. Termination without inquiry is unconstitutional. In Ram Niwas’s case no inquiry was conducted, no independent evidence was produced, and no individual act was established.
Moreover, although the charge was formally framed as one of ‘loss of confidence’, the order itself proceeded entirely on the logic of misconduct in concluding that the termination was not illegal. The Tribunal accepted the management’s narrative that it had taken a “lenient and sympathetic view” by refraining from a formal dismissal, claiming that dismissal would have imposed stigma and financial hardship on the worker. A reasoning difficult to accept.
The “trumpian” logic of economic expediency
In 2013, while denying bail to Maruti workers, the Chandigarh High Court had noted that the incident had “lowered the reputation of India in the estimation of the world” and that foreign investors would hesitate to invest due to “fear of labour unrest.” Ram Niwas’s judgment emphasizes nation-building and workforce discipline. Evidently, the legal discourse surrounding the Maruti incident has been framed less in terms of workers’ rights or due process, and more in terms of corporate interests.
Despite these structural pressures, the workers have persistently continued their campaign for reinstatement, fully aware that individual court cases can drag on for another decade. Their collective efforts to organise and demand reinstatement have repeatedly faced disruption including police interventions, blocked meetings, and cleared protest sites. Ram Niwas along with many former Maruti workers remain without employment.
Khushiram noted that the Chandigarh High Court is scheduled to hear their case on the right to protest at the factory in January 2026, while Ram Niwas is set to appeal his Tribunal judgment the same month.
According to legal academic Alan Hunt, law presents itself as neutral and universal while masking its embeddedness in the interests of the ruling class. “Nation-building” is indeed crucial and also a realisation of what Nehru notes in his seminal speech, ‘A Tryst with Destiny.’
Justice, however, is the foundation of any nation-building project, and the same is affirmed in the Preamble, and when the delivery of justice or the exercise of empathy is described as an act of “succumbing,” it raises fundamental questions about whether the nation is being envisioned through a commitment to dignity or through expectations of submission.
Does the nation genuinely uphold the rights of its working citizens, or does a “trumpian” logic of economic expediency repeatedly override dignity, fairness, and the rule of law? The answer is not difficult to discern.
Even today, approximately 83 percent of workers across Maruti’s four plants are employed in categories such as Temporary Workers 1 and 2, Casual Workers, Apprentices, Contract Workers, and Student Trainees, earning minimal wages.
