This act has made provision for the investigation and settlement of industrial disputes and for certain other purposes. It provides for a special machinery of conciliation officers, work committees, court of inquiry, Labour courts, Industrial Tribunals and national Tribunals, defining their powers, functions and duties and also the procedure to be followed by them. It also enumerates the contingencies when a strike or lock-out can be lawfully resorted to, when they can be declared illegal or unlawful, conditions for laying off, retrenching discharging or dismissing a workman, circumstances under which an industrial can be closed down and several other matters related to industrial employees and employers. (i) The central government is appropriate government for the industries which are carried on: a. By or under the authority of Central Govt. b. By a railway company: c. A controlled industry, specified for this purpose: d. In relation to certain industries enumerated in sec 2(a) of the act. An ir transport service, or a banking or an insurance company, a mine, an oil field, Cantonment Board, or a major port, any company in which not less than fifty-one percent of the aid-up share capital is held by the Central Government, or any corporation, not being a corporation referred to in this clause, established by or under any law made by Parliament, or the Central public sector undertaking, subsidiary companies set up by the principal undertaking and autonomous bodies owned or controlled by the Central Government, the Central Government, and] (ii) In relation to any other industrial dispute, including the State public sector undertaking, subsidiary companies set up by the principal undertaking and autonomous bodies owned or controlled by the State Government, the State Government: Provided that in case of a dispute between a contractor and the contract labour employed through the contractor in any industrial establishment where such dispute first arose, the appropriate Government shall be Central Government of their State Government, as the case may be, which has control over such industrial establishment.

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