Point of Law: An enquiry would be in line with the rights in connection with registration and employment of headload workers

JUDGMENT :

A.K. Jayasankaran Nambiar., J.

The Kerala Headload Workers Welfare Board is the appellant herein, aggrieved by the judgment dated 6.10.2021 of the learned Single Judge in W.P.(C).No.11601/2021. The brief facts necessary for disposal of the Writ Appeal are as follows :

The writ petitioner is the proprietor of MAB Vegetables, Onion and Potato Merchants in Muvattupuzha, an establishment dealing with wholesale marketing of onions and potatoes. He had approached the writ court aggrieved by the rejection of an application, preferred by him in respect of nine regular workers attached to his establishment, for registration in terms of Rule 26A of the Kerala Headload Workers Rules, 1981 [hereinafter referred to as the “Rules”]. Initially, applications were preferred in respect of four persons [Exts.P1 to P4] on 23.11.2020, and thereafter, in respect of a further five persons [Exts.P5 to P9] on 2.12.2020. It was the specific case of the petitioner that the persons, in respect of whom he had preferred applications for registration as Headload workers, were employed by him in his establishment, and that, notwithstanding the said fact, the Assistant Labour Officer, at first instance, and the District Labour Officer, in appeal, had rejected the applications preferred in respect of the nine workers for registration under the Kerala Headload Workers Act and Rules. Exts.P12 and P15 were produced as the orders passed by the Assistant Labour officer and District Labour Officer respectively, and were impugned in the writ petition that sought for a quashing of the said orders, and a direction to the Assistant Labour Officer to grant registration to the petitioner's workers pursuant to Exts.P1 to P9 applications preferred by them.

2. In the counter affidavit filed in the writ petition by the Assistant Labour Officer, the reasons given in Ext.P12 order were reiterated and sought to be justified. In particular, the stand taken by the Assistant Labour Officer was that the establishment of the petitioner had taken registration under the Kerala Shops and Commercial Establishments Act, 1960 in 2020, and the said registration had been renewed up to 2021. In the application submitted for registration of the establishment for the years 2018 to 2020, the writ petitioner had mentioned that he had only three workers under his employment in the establishment, whereas, the applications for registration were preferred in respect of nine persons who were stated to be under the petitioner's employment. It was also pointed out that the establishment of the petitioner had been engaging the services of headload workers registered under the Board from the year 2014 onwards, and all the loading and unloading works in the establishment were being carried out by the pool workers under the Board Sub Committee at Muvattupuzha. It was also averred that at the time of an inspection conducted at the petitioner’s establishment by the Assistant Labour Officer on 24.1.2021, the loading and unloading works were being done by the pool workers and not by the persons stated to have been employed by the petitioner. The Assistant Labour Officer was therefore of the view that the stand of the petitioner, that he had employed nine persons for doing headload work, was factually incorrect, and on the contrary, he had always been relying on pool workers for doing the loading and unloading work in his establishment. Ext.P12 order was sought to be justified on the further contention that, granting a registration to the nine persons sponsored by the petitioner would result in depriving the pool workers already registered with the Board in the scheme covered area of their means to livelihood.

3. The learned Single Judge, who considered the matter, followed the judgment of a learned Single Judge of this Court in Rajeev v. District Labour Officer – [2010 (4) KLT 783] that was subsequently followed in Manzoor v. District Labour Officer -[2021 (5) KLT 554] to find that registration of a head