The Employees Provident Funds Act, 1952, is constitutional, and the definition of "employee" in the Employees Provident Funds Scheme, 1952, which excludes only employees whose pay exceeds Rs. 500/- per month, is valid in light of the Act's definition of "employee".

Dulat, J.

1. In March, 1952, Parliament enacted the Employees Provident Funds Act (19 of 1952) in order to, as the preamble says, provide for the institution of provident funds for employees in factories and other establishments. The Act was made applicable to every factory engaged in any industry specified in Schedule I in which 50 ore more persons were employed. A "factory" was defined in the Act as.

"any premises including the precincts thereof in any part of which a manufacturing process is being carried on or is ordinarily so carried on, whether with the aid to power or without the aid of power".

and an "employee" was defined as

"any person who is employed for wages in any kind of work, manual or otherwise, in or in connection with the work of a factory".

Certain exceptions were, however, provided for in the Act, and for that the Central Government was given power to exempt certain factories in certain circumstances. At the same time, power was given to the Central Government to add to the industries mentioned in Schedule I. Section 5 of the Act empowered the Central Government to "frame a scheme for the establishment of provident funds under the Act for employees or any class of employees and to specify the factories to which the scheme should apply."

In exercise of this particular power given under section 5 of the Act, the Central Government on the 2nd September, 1952, framed a comprehensive scheme called the Employees Provident Funds Scheme, 1952. Under that Scheme certain employees were excluded, and one of those exceptions applied to an employee whose pay at the time exceeded Rs. 500/- per month. Under the same Scheme the Central Government appointed a Provident Fund Commissioner and certain Regional Commissioners.

After the Scheme had come into force, the Regional Provident Fund Commissioner required the owners of the factories covered by the Scheme to make appropriate contributions to the Fund set up under the Scheme. Three companies, owing three factories which those companies had acquired by purchase from Government, objected to being forced to contribute to the Provident Fund, and, as their objections were not accepted, each of them filed a writ petition under Article 226 of the Constitution in this Court challenging the act of the Regional Provident Fund Commissioner and the Central Provident Fund Commissioner, impleading at the same time the Union of India as a party. One of these writ petitions (Civil Writ 1067 of 1957) was filed on behalf of the Lakshmi Rattan Engineering Works Limited. It was said in that petition that the petitioner-Company had purchased the factory in question only in May 1955. The second petition (Civil Writ No. 1068 of 1957) was by the Hindustan Electric Company Limited who claimed to have purchased their factory in February 1956, and the third petition (Civil Writ No. 1067 of 1957) was by the East India Cotton Manufacturing Company Private Limited and they claimed to have purchased the factory in January, 1955. Most of the grounds taken in support of these three writ petitions were common and Grover, J., before whom the petitions came up for hearing, therefore, dealt with them together.

2. The main contention raised on behalf of the petitioners before, Grover, J., was that section 5 of the Employees Provident Funds Act gave arbitrary and uncontrolled power to the Central Government to frame and kind of scheme, and that Parliament had provided no guide for the purpose, and this provisions in the Act was, therefore, unconstitutional in view of Article 14 of the Constitution. Further, it was contended that the Act by making certain contribution by certain employers compulsory placed an unreasonable restriction on the business of the factory owners and thus offended Article 19 of the Constitution. Neither contention found favour with the learned Single Judge, and he held that there were in the Act enough guides to indicate the policy of the Act, and the power of the Central Govern