The definition of "factory" in the Employees Provident Funds Act, 1952 includes any premises where a manufacturing process is carried on, whether with or without the aid of power.

S.S.Dulat, J.

1. The Regional Provident Fund Commissioner, Punjab sent a notice to the petitioner-company, Metro Motors Private Limited, demanding contribution to the Employees provident Fund Scheme, and the petitioner thereupon obtained a rule from this Court for the quashing of that notice and for prohibiting be Regional Provident Fund Commissioner from recovering the amount, the ground taken being that the petitioner-company was not running any factory covered by the provisions of the Employees Provident Funds Act, 1952.

2. The relevant facts are these : The Metro Motors Private Limited have a shop for the sale of motor-cars and attached to that shop is a service-station where motor-cars are serviced as well as repaired. About half a mile from these premises is a workshop owned by this company and in that workshop bodies for trucks and buses are made by carpenters and other persons employed by the company. The petitioners case is that neither their shop, where cars are sold, nor the attached service-station, where cars are serviced and repaired, nor the other premises, where bodies for trucks and buses are made, IS really a factory as no manufacturing process is carried on at any of these places and further that, in any case, at none of these places is the number of persons employed fifty or more than fifty.

3. It is admitted before us that before the Employees Provident Funds Act, 1952, can apply, it has to be shown that there is in existence a factory engaged in an industry specified in Schedule I to the Act in which factory fifty or more persons are employed. The solo question, therefore, is whether any such factory is in existence in the present case, and this depends on the interpretation of the provisions of the Act already referred to.

4. Before entering on this matter it is convenient to dispose of one preliminary question raised on behalf of the respondents. It was said that Section 19A of the Employees Provident Funds Act, 1952, contemplates that in case of difficulty or doubt in connection with the existence of a factor; employing fifty or more persons, the Central Government is authorised to decide the matter and that decision is final, and since in this case the Central Government has not had opportunity of considering the matter the present writ petition is, premature. It was however, conceded that this does not debar the petitioners from seeking a remedy under Article 226 of the Constitution. It is also clear that the dispute between the parties now is not as to facts but only as to the interpretation of the statute governing the entire matter and the ends of justice would not be furthered by postponing the decision in the hope of seeking a direction by the Central Government. It is of course admitted that even if the view of the Central Government were against the petitioners contentions and in accordance with the view taken by the respondents, the petitioners would still be entitled to have that decision examined in this Court if, as is the case here, the decision is to turn on the interpretation of the Act itself. The present, therefore, is clearly not a case in which we should refuse relief to the petitioners merely because they might conceivably have gone to the Central Government in the first instance.

5. Regarding the merits of the dispute, it is contended on behalf of the petitioners that as far as the main shop is concerned only cars are sold and serviced and repaired there and no manufacturing process is at all carried on and those premises, therefore, cannot be called a factory, much less a factory engaged in any scheduled industry. This is largely conceded, and it is otherwise too clear that at the petitioners shop no manufacturing process is carried on. There remains the second premises half a mile away from the shop where it is admitted that bodies for buses and trucks are made. Mr. Tuli contends that the making of these bodies with the help of carpenters Is not really a manufacturing pr