KURIAKOSE C J Vs. STATE OF KERALA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioner has been convicted by the Industrial Tribunal and Special First Class Magistrate (for Labour Laws), Alleppey under S.22A of the Minimum Wages Act for failure to submit a return in Form III prescribed by the Kerala Minimum Wages Rules and sentenced to pay a fine of Rs. 25/. The petitioner admitted before the lower court that he did not submit the return, but claimed that he was not bound to do it; and the lower court rejected the claim.

(2.) The argument of the counsel of the petitioner is that under R.21(4)(iii) every employer is not bound to submit a return in Form III and that only such employers who have made realisations under clause (i) and deductions under clause (ii) of sub-r.(4), are bound to submit returns in Form III. To appreciate this contention, I may point out that under the Kerala Minimum Wages Rules an employer is entitled to make some deductions from the wages of persons employed by him; and that clause (i) of sub-r.(4) regulates the imposition of fines and clause (ii) of the same sub-rule regulates the making of deductions for damage or loss. Clause (iii) then provides:

(3.) I may now point out a small mistake in clause (iii). Form I mentioned there is captioned "Register of Fines" and Form II is captioned "Register of deductions for damage or loss caused to the employers by the neglect or default of the employed person". These two forms between themselves exhaust all the realisations and deductions under clauses (i) and (ii), so that the reference in the first sentence of clause (iii) to Form III appears to be a mistake. The sentence should have been: