Devan Ramachandran, J.

1. Labour Welfare legislations in India are actuated by the express constitutional imperatives contained in the various Articles of Parts III and IV of the Constitution of India. The Employees Provident Fund and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952 (which will hereafter be referred to as “the Act” for brevity) has its parturition primarily in Article 41 which obligates the State, within the limits of its economic capacity, to make provisions for securing among other things, effective public assistance to employees suffering on account of unemployment, old age, sickness and disablement. Being an important legislation for labour welfare, attempts by establishments to find exemption from its applicability is met with certain resistance from the Competent Authority vested with various powers and supervisory jurisdiction under it. The case before us is no different.

2. This appeal has been filed by the Assistant Provident Fund Commissioner against the judgment of the learned single judge in W.P. (C) No.9475 of 2011, dated 7.12.2016, quashing an order of determination issued by him in proceedings initiated under section 7A of the Act, where under he had assessed the estates owned by the writ petitioners/respondents in this appeal as a single unit, thus bringing it under the sweep of the Act. The contention of the writ petitioners, which has found approval of the learned Single Judge, is that their estates are separate ones, which cannot be clubbed as one and that since each of them employ less than 20 employees, thus taking their establishments out of the rigour of the Act.

3. The genesis of the proceedings under Section 7A of the Act, as mentioned above, is that an estate comprised of 198 Acres called “The Kanjirappally Estate” situated at Vandiperiyar, which was originally owned by a certain Sri.K.E.Mathew, was registered as an establishment under the provisions of the Act and that after the death of Sri. K.E.Mathew, the said establishment was inherited by his heirs, thirteen in number, who then held the establishment as joint owners. The Provident Fund department continued to assess the establishment as a single Unit even after the death of Sri.K.E.Mathew on the assertion that the establishment was being held by his heirs as a single unit.

4. It appears that some effort was made by the writ petitioners at that time to have the establishment shown as thirteen different ones, but such attempts were disallowed by the respondents holding that the establishment continued to be one with thirteen co-owners and therefore, that its integrity had not been lost merely on account of the death of its erstwhile sole owner Sri.K.E.Mathew.

5. The position of the estate continued so till the year 2001, when the writ petitioners/legal heirs of Sri.K.E.Mathew entered into a partition deed, which has been appended to the writ petition as Ext.P1, on 20.7.2001. They say that after the partition the entire property comprised of the estate was divided by metes and bounds, with each of the thirteen legal heirs being allotted separate parcels of land and that each of them thereafter continued the business of cardamom and rubber plantation in their respective area, engaging separate sets of employees for each such estate establishments. The Provident Fund department, however, refused to accept this and embarked upon enquiry under section 7A of the Act which led to the orders impugned in the writ petition, wherein again the entire 198 acres of estate was determined as one unit and assessed as such. The legal heirs of Sri K.E.Mathew, who are the writ petitioners, filed the writ petition challenging the said orders.

6. The learned single judge, after considering the materials on record and the contentions raised in the writ petition, held that since Ext.P1 partition deed had led to the physical division of estate into thirteen separate parcels and since each of the thirteen legal heirs of Sri K.E.Mathew has been undertaking operations