Legal Reference Library

The Madras High Court has held that a widow is equally entitled, even after remarrying, to receive the Provident Fund amount from her late husband’s account. The court reiterated the fact that the bar under Section 24 of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956, was deleted in September 2005, upholding her right to claim herself as a legal representative of her deceased husband. The petitioner had remarried following her husband’s death in 2001. In 2004, on an appeal by the mother of the deceased, the Principal Subordinate Judge had given her the sole right to obtain the amount lying in her son’s Provident Fund account. The widow had preferred an appeal against the said order. Justice N Kirubakaran reiterated the provisions of the Succession Act, 1956, and the Hindu Widow Re-marriage Act, 1856, and held that, ‘the right of the widow not only to remarry, but also to inherit the property of the late husband has been declared and the women, including widows, are treated as co-parcener on par with t...

The Calcutta High Court has ruled that the power of the provident fund commissioner to impose penalty on employers who delay their contribution is limited by certain considerations. Sections 14A and 32A of the Provident Fund Act grant the authorities the power to recover penalty not exceeding the amount of arrears and specify the rate of penalty. But the authorities have the discretion to reduce it. The argument of the authorities that they cannot reduce the penalty was rejected by the high court in the case, Topcon International Ltd vs RPF Commissioner. The authorities can take into consideration factors like frequency of the delays, the number of days delayed, power cuts, non-realisation of debts by the employer, the delay on the part of the authorities to claim damages and whether the company has been declared sick. The court clarified that though the authorities could reduce the amount of penalty or damages, that discretion could not be used to waive it altogether. Before levying a...

The nettlesome problem of provident fund for casual construction workers returned to the Delhi High Court with the Builders Association of India and several construction firms alleging that they should not be compelled to pay their contribution because the workers change places and could not be traced. The court had in the past asked the government to put in place a workable scheme to benefit the labourers who change employers and work place very often. Since this has not been done satisfactorily, the employers should not be compelled to contribute to the fund, they argued. The high court dismissed their petitions stating that the problem of logistics in finding the workers and paying them is different from the liability of the employers. The argument that unless the provident fund authorities and the government could show that they had a "mechanism as per which the workmen whose job was portable could avail the benefit of the money lying to their credit all over India, no liabili...