The Employees' Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952 applies to industries engaged in the manufacture of general engineering products, such as timber products, and that the authority has the discretion to grant or deny adjournments.

This writ application has been filed challenging the action of the Regional Provident Fund Commissioner.

2. The petitioner is the owner of a timber industry which is claimed to be a small scale industry. The petitioner claims that it used to engage two to three numbers of workers on monthly basis and sometime it used to engage 3 to 12 numbers of employees as casual workers as per need. It is claimed that at no point of time, the number of workers exceeded 15. The petitioner was registered under the Assam Shops and Establishment Act and that registration certificate is Annexure III to the writ application.

3. That the petitioner was served with a notice under section 7A of the Employees' Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952 (hereinafter called the Act). The Regional Provident Fund Commissioner, NE Region at Guwahati proposed to conduct enquiry in his office on 27.10.88 and directed the petitioner to attend the office along with the documents. That notice is Annexure IV to the writ application. The petitioner prayed for time but the time was not granted and by Annexure V, the liability of the petitioner was assessed.

4. The dues of the petitioner was determined at Rs.44,478.70 in different account. The petitioner tiled an objection. Thereafter no communication was received and the petitioner was served with Bakijai notice and number of complaints were lodged in the different Courts. Hence, this writ application, with the prayer to quash the notice, the determination of liability and number of complaint cases pending before different Magistrates.

5.1 have heard Sri NM Lahiri, learned Advocate for the petitioner and Sri RP Kakati, learned Additional Central Govt Standing Counsel. Sri Lahiri, learned Advocate for the petitioner Urged the following points :

(i) That the industry of the petitioner is engaged in manufacturing/processing of timber and such industry has not been included in Schedule 1 of the Act and as such, the respondents cannot apply the provisions of the Act to the petitioner industry.

(ii) That at no point of time 20 or more persons were employed by the industry and as such the provisions of the Act cannot be made applicable to the industry of the petitioner.

(iii) That the rejection for prayer for adjournment is an arbitrary exercise of power.

(iv) That the order is violative of the principles of natural justice.

6. Let us take up Schedule 1 of the Act and the point No.1 as urged on behalf of the petitioner. This question came up for consideration in the case of Regional Provident Fund Commissioner vs. Shibu Metal Works, AIR 1965 SC 1076 wherein the Supreme Court on considering the matter pointed out as follows:

"This construction treats the process of production as the crux of the entry, and if this construction were accepted the scope of the content of the entry would be very wide indeed. If every product whose production can be referred to one or the other of the processes mentioned in the entry is construed to fall within its content, then several other entries in the Schedule would, prima facie, appear to be redundant, because this entry itself would be comprehensive enough to take them in. In that case, Explanation (a) which has been added in 1953 would itself appear to be without any purpose, because most, if not all, of the items introduced by the said clause would be included within the original entry itself. In our opinion, such a wide construction would not be justified, because we inclined to hold that it is not the process which is important in construing the entry as the character of the activity with which the industry is concerned. That we are not prepared to accept the very broad construction of the entry suggested by Sri Sen.

The proper way to determine the content of this entry appears to us to be to hold that all productions which are generally known as electrical engineering products, or mechanical engineering products, or general engineering products, are inten