SARASPUR MILLS CO. LTD v. RAMANLAL CHIMANLAL & Ors.

The Industrial Court was of the view that the term "employee" under the Act had been given an extended meaning. An employee was not only a person who was employed by the employer or over whom the employer had con\rol, but also certain types of persons had been constituted statutory employees under the Act.· - Before such a person could become the employee of the owner of the undertaking, the conditions that must bje fulfilled were: (1) the owner of the undettaking must entrust to any person the execu tion of the whole or any part of any work; (2) such entrustment rn ust be in the course of or t'or the purpose of conducting the under· taking; (3) such entrustment must be otherwise than_ as the ser· vant or ·agent of the owner and ( 4) such work must be any work which is ordinarily a part of the undertaking: The Industrial Court referred to the earlier decisions including that of the Labour Appellate Tribunal and of the Bambay High Court and examined the circumstances in which the relevant pro visions of the Act came to be amended. It wa~ pointed out that in the stat~ment of ob.iects and reasons appearing in the Bill to the Amendiitg Act, it was stated that the definition of an employee was being amended so as to cover persons employed by a contrac tor or any other person to whom the owner of an undertaking had entrusted the execution of arry work which was ordinarily part B c D E F G H SARASPUR MILLS v. RAMANLAL (Grover, I.) 971 A B c of the undertaking. The definition of 'employer' was also amend• ed correspondingly. According .to the ~dustrial Court there was a statutory obligation on the part of the mils to provide a canteen and this obligation had been discharged biY the mills by entrusting that task to the co-operative society, even if there was no positive It was pointed out that evidence of such entrustment of work. the· activities of running the canteen could hardly have been undertaken by !he co-operative society unless it was entrusted to it lt was finally held that although the c<r<>perative by the mills. society which was the real employer and not the present appellant, but by virutue of the fiction created by the amendment introduced in the Act, the employees of the Society became tile employees of the appellant. They were, therefore, entitled to the benefits of the Awards. D The sole point which has been strenuously urged on behalf of !the appellant is that on a proper constmction of the amended clauses ( 13) and ( 14) of Section 3 of the Act, the workers emplo yed in the canteen whtch was being run biY the co-operative society, cquld not have been held to be employees of the appellant. It is coDtended that the appellant was under a statutory obligation because of section 46 of the Factories Act and the relevant rules made thereunder to maintain the Canteen for the w<irkers, but the canteen was being actiially run by the co-operative Slleiety and the appellant had nothing to do with it nor did it pay any E · wages to the employees of. the society who were working in the canteen. The matter seems to be concluded by the judgment of. this Court in Civil Appeal No. 1044 of 1968 decided on April 14, 1972, in which an identical argument had been addressed that certain gardeners who had been employed by a contractor for working in the gardens of the textile mills, could not be said to fall within the definition of the word "employed" as contained iii Section In that case reference was made to the deci 3 (13) of the Act. sion in Bast/ Sugar Mills Ltd. v. Ram Ujagar.and Ors.(') It had been held that the workmen fell wtthin the definition of that word as given lib' S. 2 (z) of. the U.P. Industrial Disputes Act 1947 as they were persons employed in the industry to do manual work for reward. The workmen had been employed by a contractor with whom the mills had contracted in the course of conducting the industry for execution by the said contractor of the work of removal of press mud which is ordinarily a part of the industry. F G The above case was treated as an authority for the proposi!tion that an employee engaged in a work or operation which was inci H dentally connected with the main industry was a workman if other requirements of the statute were satisfied and that the Malis in tha'! (2) (1953] 11. L. L. J. 647. (I) [1964] (2) S. C. R. 838. 972 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [1973] 3 S,C.R. case were workers. It was pointed out that the bungalows and gardens on which the Malis in that case worked were a kind of amenity supplied by the mills to its officers and on this reasoning the Malis were held to be engaged in operation incidentally con nected with the main industry carried out by the employer. The High Court in Ahmedabad Mfg. & Calico Printing Co. Ltd, & Ors v. Their Workmen(') had relied on the above ratio and came to the conclusion that the workers in order to come within the definition of an "employee" need not necessarily be directly connected with the manufacture of textile fabrics. The decision in Basti Sugar Mills' case was treated as ~nding in the former case. Since, under the Factories ·Act it was the duty of the appellant to run and maintain the canteen tor the use of its employees, it appears to us that the ratio of the decision in Ahmedabad Manu facturing & Calico Printing Co. Ltd. v. Their Workmen would, be fully applicable in which the same provisions of the Acf were considered. · The appeal, therefore, must fail and it is dismissed with costs. A c D S.B.W. Appeal dismissed.