VENKATARAMIAH, J.

1. Shri Navakesari Prakashan Ltd. and Nav Samaj Ltd., Nagpur are the appellants in the above two appeals by special leave filed under Article 136 of th Constitution. The appellants respectively are printers a nd publishers of newspapers known as Tarun Bharat and Nagpur Times. Their case is that their employees working for wages in the administrative and editorial sections of their respective concerns were not employees as defined in section 2 (9) of the Employees State Insurance Act, 1948 (hereinafter referred to as the) prior to November 19, 1976 on which date by a notification issued under s. 1 (5) of the the Government of the State of Maharashtra made the applicable to the said employees also and that therefore they were not liable to make any contributions under the in respect of the employees up to that date. They however admit their liability to make contributions during that period in respect of persons employed by them for wages in the printing presses belonging to them.

2. The dispute regarding the liability of the appellants to make contributions under the in respect of the members of the administrative and editorial staff a rose on the Assistant Regional Director of the Employees State Insurance Corporation calling upon them by notice issued on October 1, 1975 to make contributions in respect of the said members also with effect from January 28, 1968 on which date the amended definition of the expression employee, in section 2 (9) of theas per the Amending Act No. 44 of 1966 came into force. After the above demands were made, the appellants filed applications before the Employees Insurance Court, Nagpur under section 75 of thequestioning their liability to make contributions in respect of their employees working in the administrative and editorial sections of their presses during the period between January 28, 1968 and November 19, 1976. T hey, however, did not dispute their liability in respect of the period subsequent to November 19, 1976 on which date the notification was issued under section 1(5) of theby the Maharashtra State Government. The applications were contested by the Employees State Insurance Corporation The Employees Insurance Court allowed the applications holding that until the notification under section (5) of the was issued by the State Government making the applicable to the establishments of the appellants viz the administrative and editorial sections of their presses, the employees working in those sections could not be considered as employees as defined by section 2(9) of the. Aggrieved by the judgment of the Employees Insurance Court, the Employees State Insurance Corporation filed appeals before the High Court of Bombay under section 82 of the. The High Court allowed the said appeals holding that the employees concerned came within the definition given in section 2 (9) of theand, therefore the appellants were liable to make contributions during the relevant period in respect of them also under the. The appellants have filed these appeals against the judgment of the High Court.Before dealing with the contentions raised by the appellants, it has to be stated that the members of the administrative staff and the editorial staff of each of the printing presses are employed by the management concerned for the purpose of carrying on the business of printing and publishing the newspaper brought out by it. The correctness of this finding of fact recorded to the above effect by the High Court is not assailed before us. The main contention of the appellants however is that since during the relevant period they had maintained a distinction between the factory sections of their printing presses and the establishment sections which included the administrative and editorial sections of their presses, the employees in the establishment sections could not be treated as employees to whom the was applicable until the notification issued under section 1 (5) of theexpressly brought the said establishment sections also within the scope of the.

Section 2 (9) of thewhich defines the expression employee during the period in question read thus:

"2(9)" employee" means any person employed for wages in or in connection with the work of a factory o r establishment to which this Act applies and-

(i) who is directly employed by the principal employer on any work of, or incidental or preliminary to or connected with the work of, the factory or establishment whether such work is done by the employee in the factory or establishment or elsewhere: or

(ii) who is employed by or through an immediate employer on the premises of the factory or establishment or under the supervision of the principal employer or his agent on work which is ordinarily part of the work of the factory or establishment or which is preliminary to the work carried on in or incidental to the purpose of the factory or establishment; or

(iii) whose service are temporarily lent or let on hire to the principal employer by the person with whom the person whose services are so lent or l et on hire has entered into a contract of service; and includes any person employed for wages on any work connected with the administration of the factory or establishment or any part, department or branch thereof or with the purchase of law materials for, or the distribution or sale of the products of, the factory or establishment; but does not include-

(a) any member of the Indian naval, military or air forces, or.

(b) any person so employed whose wages excluding remuneration for overtime work exceed five hundred rupees a month:

Provided that an employee whose wages excluding remuneration for overtime work exceed five hundred rupees a month at any time after and not before the beginning of the contribution period, shall continue to be an employee until the end of that period."

3. The object of the is to provide for certain benefits to employees in case of sickness, maternity and employment injury and to make provisions for certain other matters in relation thereto. Section 1(4) of theprovides that it shall apply, in the first instance, to all factories (including factories belonging to the Government) other than seasonal factories. The expression factory is defined by section 2 (12) of theas any premises including the precincts thereof whereon twenty or more person s are employed or n were employed for wages on any day of the preceding twelve months and in any part of which a manufacturing process is being carried on with the aid of power or is ordinarily so carried on but does not include a mine subject to the operation of the Mines Act, 1952 or a railway running shed. It is admitted, as mentioned earlier, that the printing presses owned by the managements where the newspapers are printed and published are factories and are governed by the. Section 1 (5) of the Act, however, provides that the appropriate Government, in consultation with the Employees State Insurance Corporation and where the appropriate Government is a State Government with the approval of the Central Government after giving six months notice of its intention of so doing by notification in the official Gazette, extend the provisions of the or any of them, to any other establishment or class of establishments, industrial, commercial, agricultural or otherwise. The expression establishment is not defined in the. It may be any industrial, commercial, agricultural or any other establishment where employees are engaged in connection with the business of the establishment. Section 38 of theprovides that subject to the provisions of the, all employees in factories or establishments to which the applies shall be insured in the manner provided by the. Section 39 of thestates that the contribution payable under it shall comprise contribution payable by the employer and contribution payable by the employee. The contributions have to be paid at the rates specified in the First Schedule to the except where the employees concerned are excluded from some of the benefits under the in which case the Corporation is authorised to fix the rates of the contributions.Now reverting to section 2 (9) of theit is seen that the expression employee means any person employed for wages in a factory or any person employed for wages in connection with the work of a factory, it also means any person employed for wages in or in connection with the work of an establishment to which the applies. If it is held in these cases that the employees in the administrative or editorial sections of the printing presses are employed in connection with the work of the printing presses which are admittedly factories, then they have to be treated as employees under section 2 (9) of theeven though no notification is issued under section 1 (5) of themaking the applicable to those sections. The fact that such a notification has been issued, either as a matter of abundant caution or on a wrong understanding of the true implication of the definition in section 2 (9), becomes irrelevant. The members of the administrative and editorial staff of the appellants are no doubt not working in the printing presses. But the question is whether they are not working in connection with the work of the printing presses which are factories under section 2 (12) of the.

4. In Royal Talkies, Aydraboe &Ors. v. Employees State Insurance Corp. employees working in a canteen and at the cycle stand attached to a cinema theatre were held to be persons employed in connection with the work of the cinema theatre. The Court, however, observed that merely being employed in connection with the work of a factory or of an establishment in itself did not entitle a per son to be an employee but it must be proved that he was not only employed in connection with the work k of the establishment but also be shown to be employed in one or other of the three categories mentioned in section 2 (9) of the.At this stage, two decisions of this Court are required to be considered. In Hyderabad Asbsets Cement Products Ltd. v. The Employees Insurance Court &Anr the appellant company which had a factory at Sanatnagar where it was manufacturing asbestos sheets contained that the employees working in its zonal offices situated at various other places who were doing the work of canvassing for the sale of products manufactured by it at Sanatnagar were not employees within the definition of section 2 (9) of theas the zonal offices were establishments and not factories. Negativing the above contention, this Court held that any person employed for wages in the zonal offices for the purpose of purchase of raw materials or distribution o r sale of the products of the factory or for administrative purposes of the factory was a person employed in connection with the worker of the factory and hence was an employee as defined by section 2 (9) of the. The Court in reaching t he conclusion also relied on the amendment of section 2 (9) of theby Act No. 44 of 1966 which provided that the expression employee included any person employed for wages on any work connected with the administration of the factory.

5. When the present appeals are considered in the light of the above decisions, the members of the administrative staff and of the editorial staff in each of the printing presses in question have to be treated as employees under section 2(9) of the Ac t. These persons are directly employed by the management concerned on work incidental or preliminary or connected with the work of the factory. The work of the factory in each case being printing and publication of a newspaper, its work cannot be carried on without the assistance of the members of the editorial staff who are engaged in preparing the material for printing the newspaper and of the administrative staff which is needed for managing the affairs of the factory. It is a matter of common knowledge that the members of the editorial staff work almost round the clock at the premises where the printing press is situated or at the precincts thereof. Their principal job is to pick up and select from out of the mass of information which flows in to the press, messages which have news value, trim them and make them fit for communication through newspaper. Even though they may not be actually engaged in operating the printing machines, their presence at the spot is essential right upto the moment the strike order is given for the printing of the newspaper. There are cases where changes in the matter to be printed are effected even a few minutes before the process of printing is be gun and cases where even after a few copies of newspaper are printed, they are withheld and destroyed on the last minute advice of a responsible members of the editorial staff are not unknown. The editors, news editors, sub-editors, reporters et c. who constitute the editorial staff at the press are the collectively referred to as the gate keepers of news because they determine what should be published and what should not be published. A printing press established for the purpose of publish ing a newspaper cannot effectively function at all without the services of the members of the editorial staff being made available almost till the time the newspaper comes out of the printing machine. They virtually constitute an integral p art of the newspaper press and they are employed in connection with the work done at the printing press. The members of the editorial staff clearly fall under clause (i) of section 2(9) of the. It is so even in the case of the administrative staff. They fall under the clause containing the words includes any person employed for wages on any work connected with the administration of the factory. It may be stated here that even without the amendment made by Act No. 44 of 1966 this Court in Nagpur Electric Light &Power Co. Ltd. v. Regional Director Employees State Insurance Corporation etc had taken the view that the clerical staff etc. of a factory whether they worked within the factory or outside its premises would be employees under section 2(9) of theas it stood before its amendment.The argument that since a person mainly employed in a managerial or administrative capacity cannot be treated as a working journalist under section 2(9) of the Working Journalists (Conditions of Service) and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1955, the members employed in the administrative staff should not be treated as employees in a printing press is an extremely Jenuous argument and it is not worth probing further. The effect of on Act cannot be controlled by the provisions of another Act unless the provisions in one have bearing on the provisions of the other. No such provision is brought to our notice. The contention that since the is not expressly made applicable to newspaper establishments by the Working Journalists (Conditions of Service) Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1955 as it has made certain laws applicable by sections 3, 14 and 15 thereof, the should not be applied to the editorial staff has also no merit. We are satisfied that section 2(9) of theclearly brings them within the scope of the.

6. On an examination of the provisions of the, we are of the view that the persons employed for wages in the administrative section and the editorial section of each of the printing presses in question are employees as defined in section 2(9) of theand the demand made by the Employees State Insurance Corporation is a justified one.

7. In the result the appeals fail and they are dismissed with costs.

8. Appeals dismissed.