Procedural recovery provisions may apply to earlier unpaid liabilities when they remain outstanding after commencement.

Section 45B of the Employees State Insurance Act, 1948 was treated as a procedural provision governing only the mode of recovery. Because it did not create or extinguish liability, but merely enabled recovery of an existing unpaid contribution as arrears of land revenue, it could apply to contributions that had fallen due before the section came into force and remained unpaid when recovery was initiated. The recovery notices were therefore valid, and the mechanism under Section 45B was held applicable to the unpaid contributions in question.

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Issues: Whether Section 45B of the Employees State Insurance Act, 1948, which permits recovery of contributions as arrears of land revenue, could be applied to contributions that had become payable before the section came into force but remained unpaid thereafter.

Analysis: Section 45B was held to be a procedural provision concerned only with the mode of recovery. A procedural enactment may operate retrospectively unless such construction is textually inadmissible. The material point was that the contributions continued to remain unpaid when recovery was initiated after the provision had already come into force. Since the section did not create or extinguish the liability but only provided an enforceable mode for recovering an existing unpaid liability, it could be invoked for earlier unpaid contributions.

Conclusion: Section 45B could be pressed into service for recovering unpaid contributions that had fallen due before its insertion, and the recovery notices were valid.

Final Conclusion: The appeal succeeded and the recovery mechanism under Section 45B was held applicable to the unpaid contributions in question.

Ratio Decidendi: A procedural provision governing the mode of recovery may apply to antecedent liabilities that remain unpaid when the provision comes into force, unless retrospective application is textually barred.

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