KULDEEP SINGH GILL Vs. STATE OF PUNJAB

JUDGEMENT

(1.) HEARD Solitary point for consideration in Criminal Miscellaneous Nos 109-M and 110-M both of 1989 is whether doctor's clinics being run by the petitioner on Partap Singh Road and Dosanjh Road at Moga can be termed as commercial establishments within the meaning of Section 2(iv) of the Punjab Shops and Commercial Establishments Act, 1958.

(2.) THE relevant provision reads, "commercial establishment" means any premises wherein any business, trade or profession is carried on for profit, and includes journalistic or printing establishment and premises in which business of banking, insurance, stocks and shares, brokerage or produce exchange is carried on or which if used as hotel, restaurant, boarding or eating house, theatre, cinema or other place of public entertainment or any other place which the Government may declare, by notification in the official Gazette, to be a commercial establishment for the purposes of this Act.

(3.) IT is true that Section 2(4) of the Act has used words of very wide import and grammatically it may include even a Consulting room where a doctor examines his patients with the help of a solitary nurse or attendant. But, in the matter of construing the language of Section 2(iv) of the Act the principle of noscitur a socities has to be adopted. The presence of the profit motive or the investment of capital tradition associated to the notion of trade and commerce cannot be given an undue importance in construing the definition of 'Commercial Establishment' under Section 2(iv) of the Act. The correct test of finding whether a professional activity falls within Section 2(4) of the Act is whether the activity is systematically and habitually undertaken for production or distribution of goods or for rendering material services to the community or any part of the community with the help of the employees in the manner of a trade or business in such an undertaking.