HON’BLE SRI JUSTICE RAMESH RANGANATHAN WRIT PETITION No.13957 of 2000 ORDER: The petitioners were contract labourers appointed as security guards in the Stock Yard of Steel Authority of India Limited, Nagulapalli, Hyderabad. Their claim in this writ petition is to confirm their services as permanent employees in the third respondent-Establishment on the ground that they have completed 240 days of service. As is evident from the affidavit filed in support of the writ petition, the petitioners were engaged through a security agency to provide security for the Stock Yard of Steel Authority of India Limited. They would fall within the ambit of contract labour under the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970 (for short ‘the Act’). The Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court in Steel Authority of India Ltd. v. National Union Water Front Workers[1] held that even abolition of contract labour system, under Section 10(1) of the Act, would not result in automatic absorption of contract labour in the establishment of the principal employer in which they were working at that time. The Supreme Court further observed that, neither Section 10 of the Act nor any other provision in the Act, whether expressly or by necessary implication, provided for automatic absorption of contract labour on issuing a notification by the appropriate Government under sub- section (1) of Section 10, prohibiting employment of contract labour in any establishment and, consequently, the principal employer could not be required to order absorption of the contract labour working in the concerned establishment. In the light of the authoritative judicial pronouncement of the Supreme Court in the judgment referred hereinabove, the relief sought for by the petitioners cannot be granted. The Writ Petition fails and is, accordingly, dismissed. However, in the circumstances, without costs. RAMESH RANGANATHAN,J Date:22.07.2010 usd [1] AIR 2001 SC 3527