ARJJIT PASAYAT, J. - (1.) Leave granted in SLP (C) No. 13553/2007.
(2.) In these appeals challenge is to the judgment of the Bombay High Court dismissing a batch of writ petitions filed by the appellants who are trade unions in the writ petitions. The principal contention was that once Security Guard Board constituted under the Maharashtra Private Security Guards (Regulation of Employment and Welfare) Act, 1981 (in short the 'Act') allots guards to a principal employer, it loses the power to recall, re-allot or transfer such guard as the guard so allotted becomes an employee of the principal employer. By the impugned judgment the High Court held that the main contentions advanced by the Unions were covered by a series of judgments of earlier Division Benches as well as of learned Single Judges of the High Court which were binding upon it. Nevertheless, the Division Bench also examined the acceptability of contentions advanced and ultimately held that the contentions were without substance.
(3.) Stand of the appellants in short is as follows : Under the Act and the Scheme framed thereunder the security guards, on allotment by the Board to an employer/principal employer, become the employees of that Principal Employer. The exploitation of around 70,000 private security guards employed through agencies in Maharashtra was extreme and notorious. It has been set out in detail by his Lordship Justice P. B. Sawant, as his Lordship then was, in the case of M/s. Tradesvel Security Services Pvt. Ltd. vs. State of Maharashtra (84 BLR 608). It was to ensure that such exploitation could no longer take place that the Board was set up by the State Government and given certain supervisory powers. The Board is thus nothing but a statutory recruitment/allotment body invested with certain powers to oversee the master-servant relationship which exists between the guards and registered employers to whom they are allotted, in the context of the historical gross exploitation of this section of the workers in the State. The mere fact that such powers are given to a Board by statute does not mean that the master servant relationship does not exist between the guards and registered employers to whom they are allotted. It is always open for this relationship to be regulated by statute. It is an anathema to Indian industrial law that a servant cannot have a master. Thus, an employer for the registered guards has to be identified. The Board cannot be held to be their employer, and it is not its case that it is the employer.;