ALIBHAI ALIAS ALI MOHOMAD S/O. TAR MOHAMMAD KHOJA, PROPRIETOR, ALIBHAI SHAKOORBHAI RICE MILL Vs. EMPEROR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE applicant has been convicted of two breaches of the provisions of the Factories Act and has been fined Rs. 30 on each count. His appeal before the Sessions Judge failed and he has now applied in revision. The first count is that he failed to display a notice of periods of work for adults showing the periods within which they were required to work and this is a breach of Section 39(1) of the Act and Rule 70 which lays down that the notice shall be in English and in the language of the majority of the workers and shall be affixed at the main entrance of the factory. The second count is that the register of adult workers prescribed under Section 41 of the Act was not available for inspection when demanded. In Rule 71, it is stated that the register shall always be kept available during working hours for immediate inspection. It has been held that the failure to produce it is a breach of Section 41(2), and the applicant, who is the owner and occupier of the factory, has been convicted under Section 60(c).

(2.) THE facts are that the Inspector of Factories made his inspection shortly after 6 o'clock in the morning on a Tuesday. He found in the factory only two notices, one in English and one in the vernacular, of periods of work and these were admittedly inaccurate and did not show the correct hours of working. He then demanded to see the register of adult workers and was told that the man in charge who had the keys had gone to ease himself. It appears that he said he would return later to see the register and came after 7 o'clock by which time the factory had closed down as it was a holiday but the person in charge of the book had then gone off to attend a funeral and the register was not produced until 3 o'clock in the afternoon. In respect of the first count there is no doubt that a breach of the Act has been committed. It was argued that the applicant was prosecuted, not for failing to display a notice, but for displaying an incorrect one and that if he had been charged with not displaying a notice he would have been able to show that he had displayed it. This argument has no force. The prosecution was launched because there was no notice as prescribed in Section 39(1), and displaying an incorrect notice is tantamount to not displaying the notice prescribed. It was alleged that the correct notice had been displayed and had been overlooked. This has been found as a fact to be untrue and the Inspector has deposed that he went all over the factory and could not find the correct notice. The notices which he did see were stated at various times by the manager to be old notices and notices which referred to the shop and not to the factory. The application in revision, so far as it concerns this count, must fail.

(3.) IT is contended that the words in this rule which relate to the register being kept available for immediate inspection are ultra vires of the Act and in particular of Section 41(2). Section 41(2) reads as follows: