Persons Not Responsible To Company For Conduct Of Its Business Can’t Be Prosecuted For Violation Of Contract Labour Abolition Act: Jharkhand HC

[16 May 2022] The Jharkhand High Court noted that a perusal of Section 25 of the Contract Labour (Regulation & Abolition) Act, 1970 indicates that every person in charge of and responsible to the company for the conduct of its business at the time of the commission of the offence (of engaging contract labour) shall be deemed to be guilty of the offence. However, in the absence of a specific averment to this effect, the persons working for the company cannot be made liable for any such alleged violations. Thus, quashing a criminal case against few persons associated with Tata Motors, Justice Sanjay Kumar Dwivedi observed, “The complaint petition nowhere states that the petitioners were in charge of and responsible to the company for conducting its affairs to implicate him in a criminal case under the Act. The complaint petition only reveals the alleged violation under the Act, and in absence of any specific averment that it was the petitioners who were in charge and responsible to the company for the conduct of its business in which the alleged commission of the offence is said to have taken place, they cannot be held liable for being prosecuted.”