whether by an agreement the statutory provisions of an Act can be over ride", inasmuch as it has ignored that in para 47 of the said judgment, the Division Bench of the Hon'ble Bombay High Court, clearly considered whether the four allowances namely, the family allowance, the house rent allowance, the adhoc allowance and the tiffin allowance could be taken into account for the purpose of calculating "salary or wages" within the meaning of Section 2(21) of the Bonus Act and had rejected the contention that all these allowances must be treated as remuneration received by the employee and must be treated as a part of the salary. The Division Bench clearly held that the four allowances "the family allowance, the house rent allowance, the adhoc allowance and the tiffin allowance" could not be considered as dearness allowance within the meaning of "salary of wages" as defined in Section 2(21) of the Bonus Act. It is pertinent to point out that in the instant case, the agreement/contract of the Petitioner Company with its workmen clearly shows that a sum of Rs. 648.25 is payable as HRA and other allowances, which are in the nature of conveyance and washing allowance, amount to a further sum of Rs. 648.25 and in view of the clear decision of the Division Bench and also the plain meaning of the words appearing in Section 2(21) of the Bonus Act, these sums could not have been included in the definition of "salary or wages" under the Bonus Act. Inspite of the above legal as well as factual position, the Ld. Tribunal has fell into error in holding that payment of bonus is to be made at least on the minimum wages, which minimum wages are defined in Section 2(h) of the Minimum Wages Act to mean and include House Rent Allowance also.
