** Though intent and objective of this social piece of legislation are very noble as they are aimed at ensuring the welfare of working classes however its implementation has made it into an apparatus of state control over industry and entrepreneurial class of the society. * A hotel, restaurant or eating place would not be considered to be a factory but in the case of G.
L. Hotels v/s T. C. Sarin, (1993) 4 SCC, 363, 1994 SCC (L&S) 3: (1993) 25 ATC 848, it was held by the bench of Justice P. Sawant and Justice Y. Dayal of Honorable Supreme Court that a Hotel, in a part of the premises whereof the manufacturing process of cooking and preparing food is carried on, is a factory.
Now it is a classic case of a case law interpreting the provision in contradiction the statute itself. * In present form Factories Act, 1948 has 120 sections and 3 schedules whereas this act also empowers state government to form rules there under and just as an example it would be note worthy that Delhi Factories Rules, 1950 has 106 rules apart from different schedules.Similarly most of the states have there own rules which further add to confusion and complexity. * Under the Act itself, 37 forms and registers are recommended to be maintained whereas if we refer to state rules then this list would simply extend thus making it very difficult for a common entrepreneur to ensure adherence to all the provisions due to bureaucratic tangle creating an opportunity for corruption and exploitation. The Factories Act strictly forbids the employment of children less than fourteen years old in factories. It also includes a sizable loophole, in that the act only applies to factories employing ten or more people with the use of electric or other forms of generated power, or twenty or more people without the use of power.
Many small scale industries intentionally fragment the manufacturing process into separate units in order to circumvent application of the Factories Act [To get around this restriction, factory owners have been known to "partition their premises and isolate the areas where work is being done with power"; See Burra, Born to Work, p. 75] and thereby employ children. Others only employ small numbers of people on the books, bringing in dozens of others as unofficial "extras. " **
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