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5. Few of the security guards who are represented through Delhi State General Workers' Congress/Respondent No. 2 in the present case had filed Writ Petition No. 889/1997 seeking the relief of absorption and regularization by the contract labourers/ security guards. During the pendency of this Writ Petition, the above said contract workers also raised a dispute under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 which was referred by the Government of India, Ministry of Labour, by order dated 09.06.1998 for adjudication to the Central Government Industrial Tribunal. The said reference was decided by the Tribunal vide its award dated 06.09.2006 which directed that the contract labour be regularized and absorbed in the service of the Petitioner. The said award was challenged by the Petitioner herein in another Writ Petition (C) No. 1074/2007.

11.The contract workers/ security guards thereafter took a plea before the Central Advisory Contract Labour Board ("CACLB") seeking abolition of contract labour under Section 10 of the Act on the ground that there existed a genuine contract labour system in the establishment and that they were working under the control and supervision of the contractors, but the process should be abolished under Section 10 of the Act.

20.Learned counsel for Respondent No.1, placed reliance on the award of the CGIT dated 06.09.2006. While examining the relationship between the contract workers and the management (IOCL), it was observed by CGIT that the workmen working for the Petitioner were under direct control and supervision of the Petitioner. The Contractors acted as name lenders only. They provided contract labourers to the Petitioner, and thereafter their supervision and control was and had always been under the Petitioner. It was further submitted that the job performed by the workmen in the Petitioner's establishment was regular and perennial in nature and the same workmen had been working continuously since 1993 in the same establishment under the names of different Contractors.

28.It was further contended by learned counsel for Respondent No.2 that the present stand of the workmen before the Board was not diametrically opposite to their previously adopted stand before CGIT. She contended that the present stand before the Board was in the alternative to the stand of the workmen covered in the Writ Petition (C) No. 1074/2007 pending before this Hon'ble court. Such alternative stands were always permissible in law. It was further submitted by learned counsel that the judgment in the case of Steel Authority of India Ltd. Vs. Union of India reported as (2006) 12 SCC 233 was not applicable to the present case as in the case in question, it was the admitted position of the workmen that they were contract workers, which they wanted to change by way of amendment. However, in the present case, the case of the Respondent No.2 since beginning had been that they were the direct employees of the Petitioner and that in the alternative, even otherwise the work performed by them was of permanent and perennial nature and all requirements of Section 10 stood satisfied and that therefore contract labour system should be abolished in the establishment in question.