The Second Schedule to the Employees' State Insurance Act, 1948, should be interpreted in harmony with the enacting provisions of the Act, particularly Section 2, Clauses 15-A and 15-B, which define permanent partial disablement and permanent total disablement in terms of the earning capacity of the workman.

JUDGMENT :

P.A. CHOUDARY, J.

1. We find that this appeal by the Employees' State Insurance Corporation (hereinafter referred to as 'the Corporation') is without merit. The employee was a Turner working under the management of a rubber industry in Hyderabad. One day while attending to his routine employment duties and feeding rubber into the machine, his fingers got caught and cut in the machine. He suffered the grievous loss of four of his right hand fingers. By reason of that accident, three of his right hand fingers were completely cut off and one had become totally inactive and useless. As a fact, he was incapacitated to do the usual work of feeding rubber any more. He claimed employment insurance benefits under the Act. He is entitled to such benefits. But what is in dispute is the quantum. For the assessment of loss of his earning capacity, the employee was sent to a Medical Board for its examination. Section 54-A(1) of the Employees' State Insurance Act, 1948 (hereinafter referred to as 'the Act'), is the section of the Act that authorises this procedure. It requires the case of any injured person claiming any disablement benefit to be referred by the Corporation to a Medical Board for determination of the disablement question. The reference is required for determination of the nature of the injury and the quantification of loss of earning capacity. The Medical Board determines the extent of loss of earning capacity of the injured person. The Board, in the present case opined, disagreeing with the claims of the employee, that loss of four fingers of his right hand did not result in permanent total disability.

It held that the employee merely suffered permanent partial disability. Having felt aggrieved by this somewhat startling opinion of the Medical Board, the employee appealed the matter u/s 54-A(2) of the Act to the Employees' Insurance Court (hereinafter referred to as 'the Insurance Court'). The Insurance Court disagreeing with the opinion of the Medical Board, held that the employee suffered a permanent total disability. Now the Corporation complains to this Court and files this appeal contending that the loss of four fingers could result, as per the Second Schedule of the Act, only in permanent partial disability to the workman.

2. The decision in this appeal turns more upon law and less upon facts. The matter should be examined under the provisions of the Act, but never forgetting the fact that that Act has a social purpose to sub-serve and was enacted for giving insurance benefits to the disabled workman. Some reasonable sympathy towards the workman is not uncalled for. Some reasonable construction of the provisions of the Act, therefore, is not legally out of place. On the other hand in interpreting a social welfare measure, like the Employees' State Insurance Act, adoption of such a rule of interpretation promoting the declared objectives of the Act, cannot be found fault with. Examining the matter from that angle, we must reject the contention of the Corporation. But the argument of the Learned Counsel for the Corporation is that loss of lour fingers of the right hand of an employee is treated by the Act itself as causing no more than permanent partial disability leaving no scope for play for the vibrations of sympathy upon the interpretation of the statute. On that basis it is argued by the Corporation, that the Insurance Court ought not to have held that the employee in this case suffered total disability. The Learned Counsel argued that inasmuch as the Parliament itself has treated the loss of four fingers as amounting to partial disablement only, it is not open for the courts to treat that very injury as amounting to total permanent disablement. It is true that where Parliament speaks, clearly the duty of the judicial organs of the State is to give effect to it.

3. But the question in this case, as in most cases, is whether the Parliament did say what the Corporation contends through the Second Schedule. There