IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA AT CHANDIGARH Civil Writ Petition No.5051 of 2008 Date of decision: 25.01.2010 Jagdish Chander ....Petitioner versus State of Punjab and others ...Respondents CORAM: HON’BLE MR. JUSTICE K. KANNAN ---- Present: Mr. Anupam Bhardwaj, Advocate, for the petitioner. Mr. Manohar Lal, Additional Advocate General, Punjab. Mr. Naresh Kaushik, Advocate, for respondent No.6. ---- 1. Whether reporters of local papers may be allowed to see the judgment ? 2. To be referred to the reporters or not ? 3. Whether the judgment should be reported in the digest ? ---- K.Kannan, J. (Oral) 1. The petitioner seeks for a direction against the respondents to release all the retiral benefits of the petitioner including salary payable, provident fund, gratuity, leave salary, employees deposits etc. In the course of the proceedings, this Court directed the Assistant Registrar to make an enquiry and determine the amounts which were due and payable by the Society to the petitioner. A report has been filed before this Court by the Assistant Registrar where he has detailed the following sums as payable:- i) Salary : Rs.4,28,387/- ii) Gratuity : Rs.3,37,838/- iii) Provident fund : Rs.2,31,122/- iv) Leave encashment : Rs.2,04,750/- Civil Writ Petition No.5051 of 2008 - 2 - 2. The objection to the report by the petitioner is that as regards the provident fund, the Assistant Registrar has taken notice of only the contribution made by the petitioner which was deducted from salary payable to him and the matching contribution which the Society must have paid to the provident fund, have not been added to his entitlement. The Registrar ought to have therefore made the Society liable for the entire payment that would include the contribution which the Society should have made to the Provident Fund Commissioner. 3. The learned counsel appearing for the Society contends that the petitioner was the only employee of the Society and the Society did not come within the provisions of the Employees Provident Fund and Miscellaneous Provisions Act of 1952. According to him, the claim for provident fund could not be therefore made against the respondents. 4. As regards the amounts which were found by the Assistant Registrar in the manner referred to above, there cannot any longer be a dispute. The petitioner has been superannuated on 31.10.2007 after putting in 36 years of service and the non-payment of the amount for more than 2 ½ years is inexplicable. There shall be a mandamus against the Society for payment of amount as determined in the report of the Assistant Registrar within a period of 4 weeks from the date of the receipt of the copy of the order and the amount shall be paid along with interest at 9%. 5. As regards the claim of the petitioner that the amount which the Society should have contributed to the provident fund, the contention that the Society did not come within the operation of the said Act, is Civil Writ Petition No.5051 of 2008 - 3 - merely founded on oral assertion in defence and there is no specific plea made by the respondents that the said Act is not applicable. However, the Provident Fund Commissioner is not a party and the question of recovering the provident fund accumulations from the Provident Fund Commissioner would arise only if there had been any contribution to the fund and if the Society had also been brought within the scheme of the EPF Act. For the present, it shall suffice that the petitioner gets back the money which was held by the respondent constituting as his provident fund contribution. A notice of this order shall be served to the jurisdictional Provident Fund Commissioner, Amritsar, having his office at Chandigarh, who shall make an enquiry and ascertain whether the provisions of the Act have been applied to the Verka Kissan Cooperative Marketing-cum-Processing Society Limited, Verka, District Amritsar. If the provisions of the Act have been extended and the contributions have not been made by the Society, the Registrar shall initiate action for prosecution against the officer responsible for not making the contributions and also recover such penalty and interest as the Act enumerates. The Provident Fund Commissioner himself is not a party to the proceedings and this direction is without prejudice to the petitioner resorting to such other remedy as may be available under the law. 6. The writ petition is disposed of on the above terms with costs assessed at Rs.5,000/- recoverable from the 6th respondent. (K.KANNAN) JUDGE 25.01.2010 sanjeev