Definition of “industry” reference | Arguments word split

On 19 March, a nine-judge Bench of the Supreme Court reserved judgement in the reference determining the definition of “industry” after three days of arguments. The Court heard challenges against Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board v R. Rajappa (1978) where a seven-judge bench provided a wide amplitude to “industry” defined under Section 2(j) of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947.

The Court had set aside two days for both sides to conclude their arguments, which spilled over to an additional day: the petitioner side opened on 17 March, the respondents opened on 18 March, and the two court-appointed amici argued on 19 March. 

Since then, the Court has published the argument transcripts of the hearings, which can be accessed on the Supreme Court Observer’s Case Page. A perusal of the transcripts show that, arguments ran to 93,072 spoken words across the three days—an estimated 11 hours and 5 minutes, at a conventional rate of 140 words per minute. We break down the words taken by each side and each counsel during the Jai Bir Singh arguments, with corresponding estimated times alongside.

Petitioner side took 44,428 words (≈ 5h 17m)

Figure 1 plots the 17 counsel who appeared for the petitioners and the words taken by each of them in descending order, with the estimated time in minutes or hours. No women counsel appeared for the petitioner side.

Attorney General R. Venkataramani led the charge for the Union, taking 24,805 words (an estimated 2 hours 57 minutes). The total includes his rejoinder arguments on Day 3. This was the longest single oral submission, accounting for 55 per cent of the petitioner side’s total. He opened the hearing on 17 March with 22,037 words and returned on 19 March, adding 3,071 words to his total. On Day 2 Senior Advocate Jaideep Gupta appeared for the Commissioner of Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments, Tamil Nadu, and argued for 5,080 words (about 36 minutes). Senior Advocate Sanjay Hegde for the State of Karnataka argued for 3,281 words (about 23 minutes).

Senior Advocate Shekhar Naphade for the State of Maharashtra and the University of Mumbai took 3,134 words (22 minutes); Additional Solicitor General K.M. Nataraj for the State of Uttar Pradesh—the lead petitioner—took 2,598 words (19 minutes); Senior Advocate Shadan Farasat for the State of Punjab took 1,880 words (14 minutes) across all three days. The remaining 10 petitioner-side counsel—AIIMS New Delhi, National Remote Sensing Centre, a research-institute intervenor, a Goshala intervenor, among others—collectively took 2847  words, an average of 284 words (under three minutes) each.

The dominance of the lead Union voice and the asymmetry between Union counsel and state intervenors were not unknown to the Bench. The pacing on the petitioner side was uneven. On 17 March, Venkataramanu alone occupied 76 per cent of the day’s spoken words. The longer submissions on Day 2 were from the intervening side—Gupta, Hegde and Farasat. 9 of the 16 petitioner-side counsel made brief interventions averaging 313 words

Respondent side took 34,169 words (≈4h 5m)

Figure 2 illustrates the words taken by the 10 counsel who represented the respondents, with the estimated time alongside each bar. The respondent side held the floor across Day 2 and 3, with a brief appearance on Day 1.

Senior Advocate Indira Jaising argued for 14,006 words, the longest single respondent-side submission (an estimated 1 hour 41 minutes) across the three days. Her submissions accounted for 41 per cent of the respondents’ total, opening on Day 2 with 12,494 words, followed by a brief 1,094 word submission on Day 3. Senior Advocate C.U. Singh, for the New Trade Union Initiative, followed with 9,801 words (about 1 hour 10 minutes) across the three days, with the larger share—6,745 words—on Day 2.

Senior Advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan took 3,692 words (27 minutes). Senior Advocate Jayna Kothari took 2,235 words (16 minutes); Senior Advocate Vijay Hansaria took 1,668 words (12 minutes); and Senior Advocate K.S. Chauhan took 1,279 words (9 minutes). 

Advocate Shivam Singh (884 words, about 6 minutes), Senior Advocate P.V. Surendranath (325 words, and Advocate Sangeeta Bharati (322 words) made the shorter submissions. Of the nine respondent-side counsel, three were women — Jaising, Kothari, and Bharati — together taking 16,563 words, or 48 per cent of the respondent side’s total. The pattern stands in pointed contrast to the petitioner side, where no woman counsel appeared at all.

Amici curiae took 14,175 words (≈1h 41m)

The two amici curiae appointed by the Court—Senior Advocates Jamshed P. Cama and Parthasarathi Sengupta—argued only on Day 3. Cama took 8,499 words and Sengupta took 5,673 words. Each amicus took less than either side’’s lead counsel. Their combined output of 14,172 words sat below Venkataramani’s total by 10,633 words, and above Jaising’s solo total by 166 words.

On Day 2, CJI Surya Kant interrupted Singh’s submissions to request brevity. He stated: “See, we have time constraints because… That’s why we allocated time and we have requested now to Amicus we need to give some time to this. So, please, we’ll request you that if you can wind up.” The CJI’s reference to an allocation of time was the only such reference in the three-day hearing.

Interestingly, when the CJI made this comment, Singh had taken 6,745 words (about 48 minutes) on Day 2. He returned on Day 3 with 2,709 additional words (about 19 minutes), taking his three-day total to 9,801—the second-largest single-counsel total on the respondent side. The wind-up did not, in the event, wind up.

Methodology

The figures in this article are drawn from the three TERES argument transcripts published by the Supreme Court of India for the hearings dated 17, 18 and 19 March. Each speaker’s distinct stretches of speech, or “turns” — a turn being a single stretch of speech ending when another speaker begins — were extracted from the transcripts and the words within each turn were counted. Speaker labels and transcriber markers such as [UNCLEAR], which the transcriber inserts where the audio could not be made out, were removed before counting. Speakers appearing under variant spellings in the transcripts — such as the alternative initialisations of Justice B.V. Nagarathna or the several misspellings of Additional Solicitor General K.M. Nataraj — were consolidated into single records before counting.

Estimated times are computed by dividing word counts by a conventional rate of 140 words per minute, which sits within the 130-to-160 wpm range commonly observed for senior counsel at the appellate bar. The published transcripts do not carry timestamps, so the estimated times are exactly that — estimates, not measurements. Individual counsel may speak slower or faster than the conventional rate; counsel reading verbatim from judgements typically reads faster than counsel constructing fresh argument on their feet. The figures in this article are best read as words first, with the time conversion shown alongside as an approximate guide.

(Word and turn counts were computed by a script written for this analysis, applied uniformly across all three days of transcripts. The editorial judgements and the conclusions drawn from the data are the author’s.)