- (1.) This is an appeal under Section 30 of the Workmen's Compensation Act (8 of 1923) by the contractor who has been ordered by the Commissioner for Workmen's Compensation, Etah to pay Rs. 6,000/- to the Respondent No. 1, namely, Hindustan Lever Limited by way of indemnity under Section 12(2) of the Workmen's Compensation Ac, (hereinafter referred to as the Act). The facts giving rise to this appeal may briefly be stated as follows: Smt. Javitri, widow of Damodar Singh filed an application on 7-9-1967 claiming compensation under the Act on the death of her husband. It appears that the Petitioner's case was that the deceased Damodar died on account of the falling of a stock of bags of skimmed milk powder in the warehouse of M/s. Hindustan Lever Ltd., on 12-6-1967. While he was taking the bags of skimmed milk, one of the bags fell upon him and on account of the injuries sustained in this incident he died. The Respondent No. 1 filed a written statement on 25-1-1968 wherein it was asserted that the deceased was not their employee but was a casual worker employed by M/s. Etah Goods Transport Company represented by Sardar Sewa Singh (Appellant) proprietor and an independent contractor, that M/s. Hindustan Lever Ltd., was not liable to pay any compensation to the Petitioner and that she should have impleaded the said contractor as a party who was the employer in the case. Of course, this was also averred in the written statement that the transporting work of the M/s. Hindustan Lever Ltd., was done by the said contractor, namely Sewa Singh, who was the proprietor of M/s. Etah Transport Company, Etah, which employed its own workers and supervised and controlled their work and the Hindustan Lever Ltd. had no supervision or control over the work of transporting the material. Consequently, a notice was issued to Sardar Sewa Singh, contractor who filed his written statement on 5-3-1968 and pleaded that he was a contractor of Hindustan Lever Ltd. only for the purpose of transporting of articles manufactured by them, that the loading and unloading of goods of the truck of the answering Respondent was done by the labourers supplied by another contractor whose job was to supply the labourers to the factory and that the deceased not a workman of the answering Respondent whose business was confined to the transporting of the goods, as he was merely the owner of the public carrier. Those proceedings were terminated by the order dated 18th July, 1972. Thereafter on 20th December, 1972 M/s. Hindustan Lever Ltd. made an application under Section 12(2) of the Act praying that the applicant may be indemnified by the present Appellant namely, Sardar Sewa Singh (contractor) to the extent of Rs. 6,000/- paid by the applicant to Smt. Javitri plus Rs. 500/- as costs of litigation. These proceedings were concluded by the order dated 1-5-1973 which allowed the application and against which the present appeal is directed.
(2.) It was contended on behalf of the Appellant that the impugned order bristled with legal infirmities and must be set aside. On the other hand, Sri Rajesh Ji Verma, appearing on behalf of the Respondent M/s. Hindustan Lever Ltd., (hereinafter referred to as the principal) strenuously urged that the findings recorded by the Commissioner for Workmen's Compensation in the earlier order dated 18-7-1972 were conclusive, that after an order passed under Section 12(2) in the presence of the parties, an order in favour of the principal who applied under Section 12(2) should follow as a matter of course as it was only consequential upon the previous order.
(3.) The question, therefore, which has to be decided in the present appeal is as to whether on the facts of the case the order under appeal, even though it does not independently record any finding and merely adopts those recorded in the earlier order, was a legal order or was it incumbent on the compensation Commissioner to record his findings independently on each of the points at issue between the parties while disposing of the application made under Section 12(2) of the Act Section 12 reads: 12.(1) Where any person (hereinafter in this section referred to as the principal) in the course of or for the purposes of his trade or business contracts with any other person (hereinafter in this section referred to as the contractor) for the execution by or under the contractor of the whole or any part of any work which is ordinarily part of the trade or business of the principal, the principal shall be liable to pay any workman employed in the execution of the work any compensation which he would have been liable to pay if that workman had been immediately employed by him, and where compensation is claimed from the principal, this Act shall apply as if reference to the principal were substituted for references to the employer except that the amount of compensation shall be calculated with reference to the wages of the workman under the employer by whom he is immediately employed. (2) Where the principal is liable to pay compensation under this section, he shall be entitled to be indemnified by the contractor, or any other person from whom the workman could have recovered compensation and where a contractor who is himself a principal is liable to pay compensation or to indemnify a principal under this section he shall be entitled to be indemnified by any person standing to him in the relation of a contractor from whom the workman could have recovered compensation and all questions as to the right to and the amount of any such indemnity shall, in default of agreement, be settled by the Commissioner. (3) Nothing in this section shall be construed as preventing a workman from recovering compensation from the contractor instead of the principal. (4) This section shall not apply in any case where the accident occurred elsewhere than on, in or about the premises on which the principal has undertaken or usually undertakes, as the case may be, to execute the work or which are otherwise under his control or management. Chapter II of the Act captioned 'Workmen's Compensation' deals with the question of compensation claimed by a workman. Ordinarily such claims are disposed of under the provisions of Section 3 to 5. The scheme of the Act is that the 'employer' as defined in Section 2(c) should be liable in the manner mentioned in Section 3. In view, however, of the vastly increasing ramifications of industrial establishments and the multiplicity of immediate and indirect or remote employers which such process inevitably involves the legislature has inserted a provision in the Act which may relieve a workman of the difficulty of ascertaining with precision as to who should be deemed to be the actual employer liable for compensation under the Act. Section 12, therefore, provides for a case where we have several tiers of employers or petty employers. It is a matter of common knowledge that in big industrial establishments important branches of undertakings are entrusted to contractors, who may in their turn have to employ other petty contractors working under their direction and a workman may be actually employed by one of these aforesaid persons and in such an elaborate hierarchy there is, may be no direct privity of contract between the principal and the workman in the last analysis. The workman has for all practical purposes to deal with an immediate employer but when it comes to lodging a legal claim for compensation on account of an accident he is concerned with the principal employer and not the immediate employer qua the workman. This is an enabling provision for the benefit of the workman and enacted with the clear objective that the workman should not be hampered by technicalities or practical difficulties of deciphering the correct employer. A pragmatic method has thus been devised for fixing the liability of the principal employer and thereby affording speedy relief to the workman for payment of compensation on account of the accident, though the principal has been invested with the right of indemnifying himself from the contractor who may have employed the workman and may have been responsible for immediately taking work from him.;