Somnath Ayyar, J. - (1.)Palanimalai who was described in a notice which was issued to him by the Regional Provident Fund Commissioner functioning under the Employees' Provident Funds Act, 1952, as the proprietor of a business carried on under the name and style, Madurai Perfume Paradise, is the petitioner before us. He was called upon by the Commissioner to produce returns under the Act and on his failure to do so, he was intimated by a communication issued to his advocate on 13 September, 1966, that the arrears of contribution payable by him under the provisions of the Act would be recovered by the revenue authorities as if they were arrears of land revenue. In this writ petition, the petitioner asks us for a mandamus directing the concerned authorities to refrain from recovering any amounts for the payment of which there was a demand.
(2.)The main contention urged on behalf of the petitioner by his learned counsel, Sri Vedanta Ayyangar, is that the provisions of the Act were inapplicable to his establishment and he depended on S. 16 of the Act. That section reads;
"16. Act not to apply to certain establishments. - (1) This Act shall not apply - (a) to any establishment registered under the Co-operative Societies Act, 1912, or under any other law for the time being in force in any State relating to co-operative societies employing less than fifty persons and working without the aid of power; or (b) to any other establishment employing fifty or more persons or twenty or more, but less than fifty persons, until the expiry of three years in the case of the former and five years in the case of the latter, from the date on which the establishment is, or has been set up."

(3.)The case for the petitioner is that the establishment with which we are concerned in this writ petition was set up only in 29 April 1963 and that since the number of persons employed in the establishment is less than fifty but more than twenty, the provisions of the Act are not applicable to that establishment until after the expiry of a period of five years from the date on which the establishment was set up.
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