The main legal point established in the judgment is that a stevedore cannot be considered an exporter or importer of goods and should not be brought within the ambit of the Employees' Provident Funds Act, 1952 without amending the notification.

1. These four criminal appeals and the original petition were heard together. It is common ground that if the criminal appeals succeed, the original petition has to be dismissed; and if the criminal appeals fail, the original petition has to be allowed.

2. The Provident Fund Inspector, Ernakulam, is the appellant in the criminal appeals. He was the unsuccessful complainant before the Industrial Tribunal and Special First Class Magistrate, Calicut and

Ernakulam, in calendar case Nos. 30, 31, 32 and 38 of 1963. The accused in the calendar cases and the respondent in the criminal appeals - Bernard Paul Abrao - is the petitioner in the original petition.

3. The sole question for consideration is whether Bernard Paul Abrao comes within the ambit of a notification of the Government of India in the Ministry of Labour and Employment, notification No. G.S.R. 346 dated the 7th March 1962. The notification was published in the Gazette of India dated the 17th March 1962 and reads as follows:

"In exercise of the powers conferred by clause (b) of sub-section (3) of S.1 of the Employees' Provident Funds Act, 1952 (19 of 1952), the Central Government hereby applies the said Act, with effect from the 30th April, 1962, to every trading and commercial establishment employing twenty or more persons each and engaged in the purchase, sale or storage of any goods, including establishments of exporters, importers, advertisers, commission agents and brokers, and commodity and stock exchanges, but not including banks or warehouses established under any Central or State Act."

4. It is not contended that Bernard Paul Abrao was engaged in the purchase, sale or storage of any goods or that he ran an establishment of advertisers, commission agents and brokers or that he had anything to do with commodity and stock exchanges during the relevant period. The only contention is that he was a stevedore, and that the establishment of a stevedore should be considered to be the establishment of an exporter and importer, as the stevedore plays a necessary part in the export and import of goods by sea.

5. It is not disputed that Bernard Paul Abrao was and is a stevedore. His submission - a submission with which we agree - is that a stevedore can in no sense be considered to be an exporter or importer of the goods that he handles in the course of his work as a stevedore.

6. A stevedore is a workman employed either as an overseer or as a labourer in the loading and unloading of the cargoes of merchant vessels. It is agreed that all that Bernard Paul Abrao did was to load or unload cargoes from the ships that requisitioned his services; and it is impossible to say that that work will make him an exporter or importer as understood in the language of commerce or of ordinary men.

7. Short of a statutory definition - which does not exist - including -a stevedore within the meaning of the expressions exporter and importer we cannot hold that such is the case. If the Government wants to bring the establishment of stevedores within the ambit of the Employees' Provident Funds Act, 1952, there is no doubt that what it should do is to amend the notification, and not attribute impossible meanings to familiar words and stretch the sense beyond the breaking point.

8. The stevedores are not even employed by the exporter or importer of cargo. They are engaged by the owner of the ship.

9. Willes, J. deals with the employment of stevedores as follows:

"The employment of stevedores has grown out of the duty of the owner to load and unload the ship. This duty used formerly to be executed by the crew; but, in dealing with large cargoes, the exigencies of modern commerce have created a necessity for the employment of persons skilled in the particular work of stowing cargo". (Murray v. Curris, Law Rep. 6 C. P. 24).

And Halsbury:

"Where the actual work of the loading is delegated to a stevedore, the stevedore is, as a general rule, to be regarded as the servant of the shipowner, who, as bein