JUDGMENT

Dama Seshadri Naidu, J.

Introduction:

A courier service with its registered office at Mumbai contracts with a person in Kerala to let him operate as its franchisee in one District. That franchise, in turn, appoints agents in that district so that he could have a network of people to effecitvely carry out the courier business. Those agents engage their workforce to assist them. The relationship between the franchisee and the agents, on the one hand, and that bewteen the franchisee and the workmen engaged by the agents, on the other, fall for consideration in this case. In terms of the Employees Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952, should we treat the agents as the franchisee’s branches or units?

W.A. No.1063/2016 -2-

Facts:

2. The petitioner, Sayed Navas, is the proprietor of ‘the Professional Couriers’, dealing in courier services. The cause-title in the writ petition and, now, in the writ appeal, shows the proprietary concern, a non- juristic entity, as the petitioner. So we refer to the petitioner as “the Professional Couriers” instead of “Sayed Navas”, the original petitioner —a technicality that can be condoned.

3. The Professional Couriers is the franchise