The main legal point established in the judgment is that the office of a Chartered Accountant does not qualify as a commercial establishment under the Kerala Shops and Commercial Establishments Act, 1960, based on the nature of their profession and the strict rules of profession applicable to them.

Government of Kerala issued a notification on 3O.7-1981 declaring the Offices of "Registered Accountants and Auditors" in the State of Kerala to be "Commercial Establishments" for the purposes of the Kerala Shops and Commercial Establishments Act, 1960 (for short 'the Act'). Petitioners in all these Original Petitions, who are practicing Chartered Accountants, challenge the validity of the notification. The officials of the Labor Department, as follow up measure, directed the Chartered Accountants to get their offices registered as establishments under the Act. Some of the petitioners challenged the notification as ultra virus to Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution. The main attack is on the ground that Government have no power to declare office of a Chartered Accountant as commercial establishment.

2. If the office of a Chartered Accountant is a commercial establishment, its employer is duty bound to make an application for registration certificate in respect of that establishment. The provisions of the Act impose certain restrictions or limitations on an employer who runs the establishment. No employee in an establishment shall be required or allowed to work for more than eight hours in any day and forty eight hours in any week, except when the employee is required to do over-time work in which case the total number of hours of work shall not exceed ten in any day. The period which an employee in the establishment has to work on each day, shall be so fixed that no period shall exceed four hours. No establishment shall be opened earlier than and closed later than such hours as may be fixed by a general or special order of the Government. The employer has the duty to maintain such registers and records and display on the premises of his establishment such notices as may be prescribed. Such establishment is liable to be inspected by an inspector appointed by the Government. These are, inter alias, the restrictions or limitations which the employer of an establishment is subjected to under the provisions of the Act.

3. The Government have no case that but for the notification the office of a Chartered Accountant would fall within the purview of "Commercial Establishment" as defined in the Act. So, the question is whether Government are empowered to declare the office of a Chartered Accountant as "commercial establishment".

4. "Commercial Establishment" is defined in S.2(4) of the Act which reads thus:

"Commercial establishment" means a commercial or industrial or trading or banking or insurance establishment, an establishment or administrative service in which the persons employed are mainly engaged in office work, hotel, restaurant, boarding or eating house. cafe or any other refreshment house, a theatre or any other place of public amusement or entertainment and includes such other establishment as the Government may, by notification in the Gazette, declare to be a commercial establishment for the purposes of the Act, but does not include a factory to which all or any" of the provisions of the Factories Act, 1948 (Central Act 63 of 1948) apply".

It is clear that Government have the power to declare an establishment as commercial establishment for the purposes of the Act. The corollary is, Government cannot declare any office as commercial establishment unless the office is an establishment. S.2(8) defines "establishment" as "a shop or a commercial establishment". An establishment is a commercial establishment if it is engaged in a commercial or industrial or trading or banking or insurance work. The idea conveyed by the use of the word "commercial" is that it should be understood with reference to commercial activity. There is no commercial activity unless there is at least some element of trade or business. A profession, in ordinary parlance, is not a commercial activity. Unless the transactions made in the establishment bear the character of some commercial activities, it is difficult to call it a commercial establis