RAMANATHAN Vs. STATE OF KERALA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Government of Kerala issued a notification on 30-7-1981 declaring the Offices of "Registered Accountants and Auditors" in the State of Kerala to be "Commercial Establishments" for the purposes of the Kerala Shops and Commercial Establishments Act, 1960 (for short 'the Act'). Petitioners in all these Original Petitions, who are practising Chartered Accountants, challenge the validity of the notification. The officials of the Labour Department, as follow up measure, directed the Chartered Accountants to get their offices registered as establishments under the Act. Some of the petitioners challenged the notification as ultra vires to Art.19(1)(g) of the Constitution. The main attack is on the ground that Government have no power to declare office of a Chartered Accountant as commercial establishment.

(2.) If the office of a Chartered Accountant is a commercial establishment, its employer is duty bound to make an application for registration certificate in respect of that establishment. The provisions of the Act impose certain restrictions or limitations on an employer who runs the establishment. No employee in an establishment shall be required or allowed to work for more than eight hours in any day and forty eight hours in any week, except when the employee is required to do overtime work in which case the total number of hours of work shall not exceed ten in any day. The period which an employee in the establishment has to work on each day, shall be so fixed that no period shall exceed four hours. No establishment shall be opened earlier than and closed later than such hours as may be fixed by a general or special order of the Government. The employer has the duty to maintain such registers and records and display on the premises of his establishment such notices as may be prescribed. Such establishment is liable to be inspected by an inspector appointed by the Government. These are, inter alia, the restrictions or limitations which the employer of an establishment is subjected to under the provisions of the Act.

(3.) The Government have no case that but for the notification the office of a Chartered Accountant would fall within the purview of "Commercial Establishment" as defined in the Act. So, the question is whether Government are empowered to declare the office of a Chartered Accountant as "commercial establishment".