No. of employees for ESIC registration ?

For ESIC Registration : For counting of employes , we will taken all employees irrespective of salary whether they are drawing more than Rs. 15000 or less .i.e total no. of employee is 25 out of which 20 employees are drawing salary more than Rs.15000,then also ESIC Registration required.

is there any legal case laws also on the subject mentioned?As the language used is `Establisments employing -----`,so meaning should be total number of employees,coverage of employee is from the employee side ,means which all employees are mandatorly covered & which are not ?so in case total number of employee is more then 20 ,but there is not a single employee drawaing less then 15k,then also registration is mandatory -it can be actually interpreted from the act?Again this is only my side of opnion as Mr jha has requested for for a healthy discussion ,would like to invite comments from other Experts also.

M.M. Suri & Associates Pvt Ltd v ESIC (1999 I LLJ 13 SC) the question was whether the ESI corporation could adopt this crude methodology as the definition of employee u/s 2 (9) the phrase "employed for wages" is used. The Hon'ble Supreme Court held in the above case that in the light of the above phraseology the ESI corporation can not determine coverage by head count, but should rather verify whether the employees within the prescribed wage ceiling, as given in the proviso to Sec 9 of the ESI Act, must be 10/20 to attract coverage for the factory/establishment.

--can any one have more detail of this case law or any amendment in the ACT done by the parliment  after this decision?

 & if this is the latest finding our SC ,then i think postion is clear what mr Jha has said !

How can we bring more legal experts in this thread ?

Right now my opinion is that in case, the no. of employess is more than 20 , then you hve to register. Salary doen't matters. Salary is counted only at the time of deduction.

Also, what i think is that provision of 20 employees relates more to employers, and provision of Salary of Rs 15000 relates more to employees.  Because in case, you see, the employees details need to be submit to the ESI department who are covered under the wage limit.

The above interpretation , is just based on my understanding and no evidence or proof. However, i recently got a professional assignment for ESI, PF registration and i was thinking for the same question. I need to enquire the same thing very soon, and for this need to visit the department. I will share it here with you all, whatever info i will get on this.

Thanks a lot for starting this discussion.

"""As per the Employees' State Insurance (General), Form 01 is the form required to be submitted by Employer for registration. It takes 3 days to a week for the Employer Code Number to be issued. The "intimation letter" containing the Code Number is sent by post to the employer by post and that takes an additional couple of days.

The Employee’s individual insurance is a separate process and occurs after Employer’s registration. The Employer is responsible for submitting the required Declaration Form and employees are responsible for providing correct information to the employer. The employee temporary cards (ESI Cards) are issued on the spot by the local offices in many places. The temporary cards are valid for 13 weeks from the date of appointment of the employees. It takes about 4 to 5 weeks to get a permanent ESI card.""""

Check the above text , from it we can also interpret that limit of 20 employees is applicable for employer registration and salary limit is for the employees.

Mr Gupta ,thanks for your opnion ,in fact i also gave the same opnion after reading the lanugage of the Act ,but pl let have a discussion  on the case laws of M.M. Suri & Associates Pvt Ltd v ESIC (1999 I LLJ 13 SC)(Pl confirm if any one had the complete detail of this case law as i only had a summary which i gave above).IF there is ruling of SC ,then i think matter should be beyond doubt but ofcourse have to read the above in detail ,also want to ensure even if there is this case laws there is any other case law on this as sometime a larger bench of SC gives a diffirent ruling as happened in some cases in past.Also is there is any amendment done in the ACT itself after this ruling if any?

Now days ESI department is not issuing permanent card now they will directly issue SMART CARD to the employees..... after getting the temporary cards, the employees have to go to the ESI department and submit their photograph. After some months the ESI department will send their Smart Cards to the Employer.........

ESIC will be providing ' pehchan cards' to insured persons and their family members from Aug'10. With the help of pehchan cards the insured person and his family can avail cash and medical benifits from any institution of ESI in India at anytime. The card has long life validity. Change of place or job does not required fresh registration. for bio-metric protection ESI department will take the employee and his family details such as photograph, finger prints etc.

Thanks for the information ,but isn`t we are deviating from the main subject?

The conculsion arrived after having discssion with ESIC authrities is as under:

--For `Factory`--total persons working in the Factory to be counted --as per latest amendment done in the Act.

--For shops  & Establishments--Only employee (drawing salary/wages within prescribed limit) to be considered(as decided by SC in the case refrence given before).

Dear Mr. Nitin, 

Is the above conclusion based on the "conveniency factor " of the ESIC deptt OR

in fact there is a circular / notification , regarding the above two different positions ?

In June 2010 there was Amendment to the ESI Act so you can just go thru it ,where they have clearly mentioned `10 persons working` so instead of employee now it is persons ,so the postion comes clear ,but they have mention this with refrence to the factory only ,so for shops & establishment the court ruling as given in MM suri cases will continue to be applicable  unless there is a notification by the approprite govt to this .

Thanks Nitin for the insight.

Pls clarify what all are included in salary/wages i.e whether HRA and DA are also counted.

Regards

Piyush