Extension of ESI Act: interim stay granted to continue till

The Madras High Court today disposed off a batch of more than 200 petitions seeking to quash the November 26, 2010 Tamil Nadu government order and the consequent gazette publication extending the provisions of Employees State Insurance Act to educational institutions in the state, saying the Supreme court was seized of the matter.
"The question of law whether the ESI Act would apply to educational institutions has been referred to the larger bench of Honourable Supreme Court," the first bench, comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice T S Sivagnanam, said.
The petitioners included Good Hope Matriculation Higher Secondary School and Association of Management of Coimbatore Anna University Affiliated Colleges, of Erode

The bench, while referring to an interim stay granted on the G.O, said it was disposing of the writ petitions in view of the interim orders which would continue till disposal of the matter by the Supreme Court.
The matter relates to a notification by the Labour and Employment Department through a gazette notification of June 4 2008, specifying its intention to extend the Act to educational institutions (excluding government and government- aided).
It was never published in the official gazette as required under the Act and no wide publicity was given to the notification. The final notification was not published within six months from the date of the above notification, the petitioner said.

Instead, government issued a notification on November 26, 2010 stating that provisions of ESI Act was being extended to educational institutions (excluding government and government- aided) in consultation with ESI and with approval of the central government.

The petitioners submitted that all institutions were served with a notice from ESI directing them to register with ESI, despite representations made by various educational institutions objecting to the proposal.
Some of them moved the High Court challenging the notification and got an interim stay order against which a Special Leave Petition was filed before the Supreme Court which referred the matter to a larger bench.

Others who had not done so now filed petitions, against which the court observed that the interim stay orders would continue till disposal of the case by the larger bench of the Supreme Court.