JUDGMENT

Dr. ARIJIT PASAYAT, J. - Leave granted in SLP (C) No.13553/2007.

2. In these appeals challenge is to the judgment of the Bombay High Court dismissing a batch of writ petitions filed by the appellants who are trade unions in the writ petitions. The principal contention was that once Security Guard Board constituted under the Maharashtra Private Security Guards (Regulation of Employment and Welfare) Act, 1981 (in short the `Act) allots guards to a principal employer, it looses the power to recall, re-allot or transfer such guard as the guard so allotted becomes an employee of the principal employer.

3. By the impugned judgment the High Court held that the main contentions advanced by the Unions were covered by a series of judgments of earlier Division Benches as well as of learned Single Judges of the High Court which were binding upon it. Nevertheless, the Division Bench also examined the acceptability of contentions advanced and ultimately held that the contentions were without substance.

4. Stand of the appellants in short is as follows: Under the Act and the Scheme framed thereunder the security guards, on allotment by the Board to an employer/principal employer, become the employees of that Principal Employer.

5. The exploitation of around 70,000 private security guards employed through agencies in Maharashtra was extreme and notorious. It has been set out in detail by His Lordship Justice P.B. Sawant, as His Lordship then was, in the case of M/s. Tradesvel Security Services Pvt. Ltd. Vs. State of Maharashtra (84 BLR 604). It was to ensure that such exploitation could no longer take place that the Board was set up by the State Government and given certain supervisory powers. The Board is thus nothing but a statutory recruitment/allotment body invested with certain powers to oversee the master-servant relationship which exists between the guards and registered employers to whom they are allotted, in the context of the historical gross exploitation of this section of the workers in the state. The mere fact that such powers are given to a Board by statute does not mean that the master servant relationship does not exist between the guards and registered employers to whom they are allotted. It is always open for this relationship to be regulated by statute.

6. That It is an anathema to Indian industrial law that a servant cannot have a master. Thus, an employer for the registered guards has to be identified. The Board cannot be held to be their employer, and it is not its case that it is the employer.

7. Strong reliance is placed on a decision of this Court in Vizagapatnam Dock Labour Board v. Stevedores Assn. Vizagapatnam and Ors. (1970 (2) SCR 303). This Court held that the registered employer to whom the labour force is allotted by the board is the employer whose work of loading and unloading of ships is done by the dock workers allotted to them. It is pointed out that this conclusion was arrived at despite the circumstances that on recruitment and registration of the dock labour force, fixation of wages and D.A., payment of workmens compensation, taking of disciplinary action, prohibition of employment of workmen who were not registered with the board, categorization and fixation including increase or decrease in the number of dock workers and transfer and promotion of dock workers were done by the board. Reliance has also been made on several judgments of learned Single Judge of the Bombay High Court.

8. It is pointed out by the respondents that the entire batch of writ petitions before the High Court to which these appeals relate are concerned with Security Guards supplied by the statutory board to principal employers and have nothing to do with private security agencies or agency guards. All the principal employers involved in these appeals had at the concerned time been using Board guards i.e. those recruited and selected by the Board post 1987 to various principal employers.

9. Under Clause 3 of Section 2 of th