LAW FOR ALL

a notification dated July 7, 2005 issued by the Central Government under section 10(1) of the Act. The notification was issued after due consultation with the Central Advisory Central Labour Board with regard to the conditions of work and benefits provided for the contract labour and other relevant factors enumerated in sub-section 2 of section 10 and it prohibited the employment of contract labour “in the works of sleeper renewal of railway Tracks, repairing, restoration and laying and linkage of tracks in the establishment of Kolkata Port Trust, Kolkata” with effect from the date of publication of the notification in the official gazette.= the division bench has carved out an exception in favour of the respondent, Port Trust of Calcutta (hereinafter, “Port Trust”) from a notification issued by the Central Government under section 10(1) of the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970 (hereinafter “the Act”) and held that the notification “would not in any way affect the right of the Port Trust to assign the work of laying and linkage of railway tracks as one time measure of (sic. to) RITES, another Central Government Organization”. Whether the work of laying and linking of tracks is of perennial nature and whether workers engaged through contractors are employed by the Port trust for that work are pure questions of fact that were investigated by the statutory committee constituted under section 5 of the Act and are covered by the recommendations made both by the Committee and by the Advisory Board. It was, therefore, quite wrong for the division bench of the High Court to completely nullify that part of the notification in a highly casual and off- hand manner and simply on the ipse dixit of the respondent; more so as the division bench did not otherwise find any illegality in the notification in question. In light of the discussion made above, we see no justification for the division bench of the High Court to carve out the exception and to rationalize the assignment of the contract to RITES merely on the ground that it is another Central Government organization. The High Court clearly exceeded its jurisdiction in passing the impugned order. 19. We are, therefore, unable to sustain the impugned order passed by the division bench. The order of the division bench of the High Court is set aside and the order of the learned single Judge is restored.