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3. The said contract, executed on a principal-to-principal basis, was extended from time to time and finally expired on 10.10.2002. During the subsistence of the contract, the loading and unloading work for these flights was performed exclusively by the contract labour engaged by Respondent No. 2, and no regular employees of the petitioner were deployed for such tasks.

4. After the expiry of the contract, Respondent No. 1, Airport Employees Union, representing 183 contract workers employed by Respondent No. 2, approached the Deputy Chief Labour Commissioner (Central), Chandigarh (hereinafter referred to as „DLC‟), by filing a petition under Rule 25(2)(v)(a) & (b) of the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Central Rules, 1971 (hereinafter referred to as „CLRA‟), seeking parity of wages and service conditions with the regular loaders/helpers of Air India.

5. Vide order dated 06.08.2007, the DLC held that the 183 contract workers, who were members of Respondent No. 1 Union, were entitled to wages and other service conditions equivalent to those of the regular loaders/helpers of Air India at the entry level, and that Terminal I-B and Terminal-II were to be treated as "one establishment." The relevant portion of the order dated 06.08.2007 passed by the DLC is reproduced as under:

In view of the foregoing the one hundred and eighty three (183) workers whose particulars are contained in the application dated 02.02.2001 of the applicant union are entitled to same wages and other condition of service as applicable to the permanent loaders/helpers of the Indian Lines Ltd. at the entry level."

6. On the basis of the aforesaid administrative order, Respondent No. 1 filed an application under Section 33C(2) of the ID Act, being LCA No. 10 of 2008, before the Tribunal, seeking computation and implementation of the benefits allegedly accruing to the contract workers. The petitioner contested the maintainability of the said application on the ground that there existed no employer-employee relationship between Air India and the contract workers, as the union employees were admittedly employed by the contractor and that the order dated 06.08.2007 passed under Rule 25(2)(v)(a) of the CLRA was merely an administrative direction imposing conditions on the contractor‟s licence, and could not be treated as an "award" or "settlement" under the ID Act.

16. It is submitted that Rule 25(2)(v)(a) of the CLRA Rules merely regulates the licensing conditions of the contractor by mandating parity of wages and service conditions where similar work is performed by regular and contract workers. This Rule does not statutorily impose any corresponding liability upon the principal employer to bear such parity payments. The obligation remains confined to the contractor‟s license conditions, breach of which may attract administrative consequences but cannot translate into enforceable monetary liability of the principal employer under Section 21(4) and that is precisely what is held by Apex Court in Hindustan Steelworks (supra).