REGIONAL DIRECTOR ESIC Vs. HIGH LAND COFFEE WORKS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The central question involved in this batch of appeals preferred by the Eegional Director, Employees State Insurance Corporation, Bangalore, against the order dt.20-3-1975 of the Employees Insurance Court, Bangalore, is whether the factories of the respondents which were seasonal factories within the meaning of S.2(12) of the Employees' State Insurance Act, 1048 (hereinafter to be called the 'Act') would cease to he such seasonal factories after the amendment of S. 2 (12) of the Act by the Amending Act 44 of 1966, if the said factories worked lor a period in excess of seven months in a year.

(2.) The facts which lie in a short compass are not in dispute. They are set-out in the course of the order of the Court below and it is not necessary to re-state them here.

(3.) The factories of the five respondents are engaged in ' coffee curing ' which involves the processes of debusing, cleaning, grading, garbling and packing raw coffee. There is no dispute that the factories of the live respondents were "seasonal factories" witnin the meaning of the definition of that expression obtaining in S.2(12) of the 'Act', as it stood prior to its amendment fay the Amending Act 44 of 1966, and that as S.l(4) of tne Act provides that the provisions of the Act shall apply to all factories other than "seasonal factories", the said factories did not attract the provisions of the Act.