EXPRESS PUBLICATIONS MADURAI LTD Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) In this petition filed under Article 32 of the Constitution of India challenge is to the constitutionality of paragraph 80 (2) of the Employees Provident Fund Scheme, 1952. The effect of the impugned paragraph is that the employees of newspaper industry, for the purposes of provident fund scheme, do not fall in the category of excluded employees despite their pay being above prescribed amount as notified by Government of India from time to time.

(2.) In order to appreciate the question involved, it is necessary to examine certain provisions of the Employees Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952 (for short, the PF Act).

(3.) The PF Act was passed by the Parliament in the year 1952 to, inter alia, provide for the institution of provident fund for employees in factories and other establishment. Sub-section (3) of Section 1, inter alia, provides that the Act applies to every establishment which is a factory engaged in any industry specified in Schedule I and in which twenty or more persons are employed and to any other establishment employing twenty or more persons or class of such establishments which the Central Government may, by notification in the Official Gazette, specify in this behalf. The expression "basic wages" is defined in Section 2 (b) and the expression "scheme" in Section 2(1). Scheme means the Employees Provident Fund Scheme framed under Section 5 of the PF Act. The Central Government has been empowered to add to Schedule-I any other industry in respect of the employees whereof it is of opinion that a provident fund scheme should be framed under the Act and thereupon the industry so added shall be deemed to be an industry specified in Schedule I for the purposes of the Act. Section 5, inter alia, provides that the Central Government may, by notification in the Official Gazette, frame a Scheme to be called the Employees Provident Fund Scheme for the establishment of provident funds under the Act for employees or for any class of employees and specify the establishments or class of establishments to which the said Scheme shall apply and there shall be established as soon as may be after the framing of the Scheme, a Fund in accordance with the provisions of the Act and the Scheme.