Harish Tandon, J.

These bunch of applications pertain to the direction to pay the legitimate dues to the secured creditors from the sale proceeds lying with the official liquidator in terms of the adjudication of claims on the basis of proof submitted with the official liquidator.

Apart from the letter of direction sought by the official liquidator, the secured creditors have also approached by filing the applications for release of their dues on pro rata basis.

In course of the arguments, all the parties who intervened, raised a point whether the contract labourers can be brought within the ambit of Section 529, 529A and 530 of the Companies Act. According to the banks who are arraigned as secured creditors denied the right of the contractual labours as a workman within the meaning of aforesaid provisions of the Companies Act and have further assailed the decision of the official liquidator in bringing those contract labourers within the definition of the workmen under the Companies Act.

The contract labourers refute the stand of the bank by saying that their services were perennial in nature and after the abolition of the contract labourers by introduction of the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970, they become the employee of the company (in liquidation) and, therefore, are to be treated as workmen having a preferential claim under the Companies Act.

Section 529 of the Companies Act put the workmen in the category of the secured creditors and to have a pari passu charge with the other secured creditors. Section 529A of the said Act containing a non obstante clause gives primacy to workmen dues and debts of the secured creditors in priority to all other debts to be paid in full unless the assets are insufficient to meet them, otherwise they would be paid in equal proportion. Section 530 of the Act depicts the preferential payments and there is no quarrel that the wages or the salary of an employee who rendered service to the Company along with the accrued holiday remuneration and other statutory benefits.

For the purpose of Section 529A and 530, the workmen is defined in Sub section (3) of Section 529 of the Act to mean the employees of the company being the workmen within the definition of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947.

Before proceeding to deal with the argument so advanced and the point raised before this Court, it is axiomatic to quote the aforesaid Sections, which runs thus :-

“529. Application of insolvency rules in winding up of insolvent companies.—(1) In the winding up of an insolvent company, the same rules shall prevail and be observed with regard to—

(a) debts provable;

(b) the valuation of annuities and future and contingent liabilities; and

(c) the respective rights of secured and unsecured creditors;

as are in force for the time being under the law of insolvency with respect to the estates of persons adjudged insolvent:

[Provided that the security of every secured creditor shall be deemed to be subject to a pari passu charge in favour of the workmen to the extent of the workmen’s portion therein, and where a secured creditor, instead of relinquishing his security and proving his debt, opts to realise his security,—

(a) the liquidator shall be entitled to represent the workmen and enforce such charge;

(b) any amount realised by the liquidator by way of enforcement of such charge shall be applied rateably for the discharge of workmen’s dues; and

(c) so much of the debt due to such secured creditor as could not be realised by him by virtue of the foregoing provisions of this proviso or the amount of the workmen’s portion in his security, whichever is less, shall rank pari passu with the workmen’s dues for the purposes of Section 529A.]

(2) All persons who in any such case would be entitled to prove for and receive dividends out of the assets of the company, may come in under the winding up, and make such claims against the company as they respectively are entitled to make by virtue