Tannery is a factory.

JUDGMENT :- The appellants are the petitioners (Messrs, Miya Hajee Ismail Sahib and Co.), and the appeal is directed against the order of the Additional Commissioner for Workmens Compensation, Madras, in Case No. 2 of 1956 on his file. The appeal has been argued with regard to the single question, whether the court below was right in holding that the Tannery of the petitioners (appellants) was a factory as defined in Sec. 2(xii) of the Employees State Insurance Act, during the period in question.

2. Now, in the Employees State Insurance Act, Act XXXIV of 1948, factory is defined in Sec. 2(xii) as follows :

"Factory means any premises including the precincts thereof whereon 20 or more persons are working or were working on any day of the preceding 12 months and in any part of which a manufacturing process is being carried on with the aid of power, or is ordinarily so carried on, but does not include a mine subject to the operation of the Indian Mines Act, 1923, or a railway running shed." We note that two essential components of this definition are the words "manufacturing process" and "power". Now, the third sub paragraph of the same definition states,

"The expressions manufacturing process and power shall have the meanings respectively assigned to them in the Factories Act, 1948."

When we look at the Factories Act, 63 of 1948, we find that manufacturing process is defined in Sec. 2(k) of the Act as any process for any of fee operations grouped in sub-clauses (1) to (5) of Sec. 2(k). We are not, however, concerned with this particular aspect, since it is not in dispute that the establishment of the appellants is engaged in the tanning and finishing of hides and skins, and, as the court below states, "In the premises of the tanner, the raw and tried (sic) skins and hides undergo various processes such as soaking, lining, unhearing, flashing and delining, scudding, tanning, colouring, buffing etc."

It is not in dispute before me that these processes, which last for about 45 days, do constitute "a manufacturing process", viewed either as separate operations of integrally taken together. It is further to be observed, that for the purpose of applying the relevant provisions, these separate operations should be integrally considered as a whole. "Power" is defined in Sec. 2(g) of the Factories Act, 63 of 1948 as "power" means electrical energy, or any other form of energy which is mechanically transmitted and is not generated by human or animal agency."

3. The admitted facts of the present case are that electrical power is being employed in the establishment of the appellants, for the pumping and storage of water, which is subsequently being used for several of the processes concerned in finishing the raw hides and skins.

The brief argument upon this aspect can be put in the following form. This electrical power is being utilised for the pumping and storing of water, widen is, of course, an essential commodity required in the "manufacturing process". This is not in dispute. But the power is not directly employed to transform or alter the products of the process at any stage. This, at best, only amounts to an Indirect utilisation of "power", and since there is no direct relationship between the use of the power and the manufacturing process, the argument is that the definition in S. 2(12) of Central Act 34 of 1948, already set out, is not applicable to the present facts.

4. This can be met upon two clear grounds, apart from other arguments with which we are not concerned immediately. The first is that the very pumping and storage of water in this establishment amounts by itself to a manufacturing process as defined in the Act. In Moosa Kazimi v. K.M. Sheriff, AIR 1959 Mad. 542, Ramachandra Iyer, J. was of the same opinion, with regard to Sec. 2(k) and 2(m) of the Factories Act, 1948. The learned Judge observed.

"It is unnecessary for the purpose of this case it consider that question, as admittedly there is an electric motor for the