Judgement

CHINNAPPA REDDY, J. :- It appears that there were serious complaints about the service conditions of about 70,000 persons working as Security Guards in various factories and establishments in Greater Bombay and Thane Industrial Complex, the majority of whom were employed through about 250 Security Agencies operating in those areas. The complaints related not merely to insufficient remuneration paid to them by the agencies, but also to insecurity of service and other forms of exploitation. There was a sample survey conducted by the Government of Maharashtra to ascertain the extent of exploitation and to secure information regarding the service conditions of the Security Guards. The sample survey revealed that most of the agencies were not registered under the Shops and Establishments Act. There was only one registered union but that union accounted for membership of 2200 only. It was found that most of the Security Guards did not enjoy the benefit of any Provident Fund Scheme or any scheme of Gratuity. Most of them were not covered by the Employees State Insurance Scheme and had no medical facilities. Leave facilities were inadequate. Rest intervals were not properly provided. Wages were low and only a few agencies paid overtime and bonus. Most of them did not also have either drinking water facility, canteen facility or transport facility. A very meagre percentage of Guards were provided with living quarters. It was recommended that it was absolutely necessary to prevent exploitation of the unprotected Security Guards and to provide them with better service conditions. Pursuant to the report of the committee which made the sample survey, the Government issued the Maharashtra Private Security Guards (Regulation of Employment and Welfare) Ordinance. The Ordinance was replaced by the Maharashtra Private Security Guards (Regulation of Employment and Welfare) Act, 1981. The vires of the Act were challenged in various writ petitions filed in the High Court of Bombay by Security Agencies. They were dismissed by the High Court and a petition for special leave to appeal under Art. 136 of the Constitution was dismissed by the Supreme Court on January 5, 1983. While dismissing the special leave petitions, the Supreme Court gave the following directions :

"It appears that some of the petitioners have applied to the State Government to accord exemption to them from the operation of the provisions of the Private Security Guards (Regulation of Employment and Welfare) Scheme, 1981 and those applications are under the consideration of the State Government. We, therefore, direct that the above scheme shall not be enforced as against the petitioners herein till the end of January 1983. The State Government should dispose all applications made by the petitioners before January 31, 1983."

This order was subsequently modified in the following manner :

"The order dated January 5, 1983 is modified by deleting the entire portion of the, order following upon the words "these special leave petitions are dismissed". The scheme will be brought into force forthwith."

2. In the judgment of the learned single Judge who dismissed the writ petitions initially, the learned Judge had held that it was competent for security agencies to seek exemption from the operation of the provisions of the Act. As many as 139 security agencies applied to the Government under Sec. 23 of the Act for grant of exemption from the provisions of the Act. These applications were first screened by the Advisory Committee who recommended that exemption might be granted to 21 agencies. The cases of four other agencies which were not recommended by the Advisory Committee were again investigated by the Labour Commissioner who recommended that these four agencies also might be granted exemption from the provisions of the Act. On June 28, 1984, the Government of Maharashtra finally rejected all the applications for exemption filed by the various security agencies. Several security agenc