Master-servant relationship test defeats canteen workers' claim to absorption where supervision and control are absent.

Canteen workers were not treated as employees of the Reserve Bank of India because the Bank had no statutory or contractual duty to provide the canteen and no enforceable right of supervision and control over the workers. Mere subsidy, infrastructure support, nomination of representatives, and limited administrative involvement were insufficient to establish a master-servant relationship, so absorption and regularisation were unavailable. The earlier M.M.R. Khan ruling was held inapplicable because it depended on a special statutory railway canteen framework that was absent here, and the Industrial Tribunal award was set aside.

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Issues: (i) Whether the persons engaged in the Reserve Bank of India canteens were employees of the Bank and were entitled to absorption and regularisation. (ii) Whether the decision in M.M.R. Khan applied to the canteens run through the Implementation Committee, co-operative societies, and contractors.

Issue (i): Whether the persons engaged in the Reserve Bank of India canteens were employees of the Bank and were entitled to absorption and regularisation.

Analysis: The Bank was under no statutory or other legal obligation to provide canteen facilities. The canteens were run as welfare arrangements through different agencies, and the material showed no right in the Bank to supervise and control the work of the canteen staff or the manner in which the work was done. The essential test of master and servant relationship remained the existence of the employer's right to direct and control the work. In the absence of that element, the canteen workers could not be treated as employees of the Bank.

Conclusion: The workers in the canteens were not employees of the Reserve Bank of India and were not entitled to absorption or regularisation.

Issue (ii): Whether the decision in M.M.R. Khan applied to the canteens run through the Implementation Committee, co-operative societies, and contractors.

Analysis: The earlier decision on railway canteens turned on the special statutory framework and administrative materials governing railway canteens, including the statutory canteen regime and the recognised canteen scheme. Those features were absent here. The Bank's subsidy, provision of infrastructure, nomination of representatives, and limited supervisory involvement did not amount to the kind of legal obligation and effective control that supported the claim in that earlier case. The Tribunal therefore misapplied that decision to a materially different factual and legal setting.

Conclusion: M.M.R. Khan did not govern the present dispute and could not be relied on to treat the canteen workers as Bank employees.

Final Conclusion: The award of the Industrial Tribunal was set aside because the canteen workers failed to establish an employment relationship with the Bank on the facts and in the governing legal framework.

Ratio Decidendi: Where an employer has no statutory or contractual obligation to provide a canteen and no enforceable right of supervision and control over the canteen workers, the workers cannot be treated as employees of the management merely because the management provides subsidy, infrastructure, or limited administrative support.

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