C M D SINGARENI COLLIERIES Vs. KOTA POSHAM

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The Chairman and Managing Director of Singareni Collieries Co. Ltd., Ramagundam Division, Godavari Khani, Karimnagar District, is the appellant in all these writ appeals and they are filed against a common order of the learned single Judge passed in a batch of writ petitions.

(2.) The question that arises for consideration is whether the Singareni Collieries Co. Ltd., hereinafter referred to as "the Company", is bound under law to absorb all the contract labour as 'Badli Fillers'. The Contract labours filed several writ petitions and it was contended before the learned single Judge that the contract labour who were working as Hamalies in the Company for over five years and were given training in loading the stored material, should be absorbed as Badli Fillers, on regular basis, under the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970, without insisting on their names being sponsored by the Employment Exchange. The learned single Judge allowed the writ petitions and the decision of the learned single Judge is questioned in these writ appeals.

(3.) It is submitted by the learned counsel for the appellant-Company that all the Contract labours were working under a contractor without being sponsored by the Employment Exchange, that the contractor pays daily wages to the labour, that the Company has no supervisory control over them and that it is open to the contractor to use the labour in other works and in other establishments also. Even otherwise, the Company cannot appoint anybody unless sponsored by the Employment Exchange and there is a direction that the Company should appoint only those persons sponsored by the Employment Exchange, as Badli Fillers.