Consultant doctors under IBC were not workmen or employees where records showed fixed remuneration and no master-servant relation.

Status as a workman under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code is tested by reference to section 2(s) of the Industrial Disputes Act, requiring employment for manual, unskilled, skilled, technical, operational, clerical or supervisory work and exclusion by statutory exceptions. Consultant doctors engaged on fixed remuneration did not establish that they were full-time employees or that their names were borne on muster rolls. Their appointment letters described consultant engagement, payments were subject to tax deduction, no provident fund arrangement was shown, and no employment contract indicated a master-servant relationship. On that material, the liquidator's partial admission of their claims was not shown to be erroneous.

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Issues: Whether the applicant-doctors, engaged by the corporate debtor as consultant doctors on fixed remuneration, were workmen or employees for the purposes of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016, and whether the liquidator erred in partially admitting their claims.

Analysis: The status of workman under Section 3(36) of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 is to be tested by reference to Section 2(s) of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947. The essential enquiry is whether the person is employed to do manual, unskilled, skilled, technical, operational, clerical or supervisory work for hire or reward, and whether the person is excluded by the statutory exceptions. On the material produced, the applicants did not establish that they were full-time employees or that their names were borne in the muster rolls as employees. The appointment letters showed engagement as consultant doctors on fixed remuneration, with tax deduction from payments, no provident fund arrangement, and no employment contract indicative of a master and servant relationship. The liquidator's classification of their claims on that basis was therefore not shown to be erroneous.

Conclusion: The applicants were not workmen or employees of the corporate debtor, and the partial admission of their claims by the liquidator called for no interference.

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