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Rajesh Subramaniam   03 August 2020

Gratuity act ( section 2a - interpretation for it cos)

Gratuity – Continuous service interpretation for Technology / IT / BPO companies

The continual years of service eligibility for gratuity mandate a minimum of five years which is unaltered (status quo remains) per the Payment of Gratuity Act.

The legal interpretation for continuous working days to be applied with a difference between “under the ground” (mining, under the sea, plantations) which is further interpreted as “hazardous job nature”; whereas “above the ground” (other) establishments represents “unhazardous job nature” - the key differentiator for the purpose of deciding the “no of days” of continuous service.

190 days or less than 6 days working per week represents an “employment in hazardous working / occupational hazard jobs by nature” and hence a resultant reduced gratuity eligible days/working days.

This is the intent of the legal scriptt notified under section 2A, 2 (i) within the same clause; if the “number. of working days at less than 6 days” was purported for “any industry” the clause would have been carefully differentiated.

So, any wrong ideation to isolate the clause of “less than 6 working days” is irrational to relate to “above the ground” non-hazardous jobs – Technology / IT / BPO companies fall under this category, they provide “safe jobs” as much five days working was intended for a lifestyle balancing amongst such industry as a “best practice” and not for any occupational hazard-related.

Hence, for Technology / IT / BPO companies, from a computation point of view, any consecutive 8 worked months period post 4 years of continuous service shall make the employee eligible for gratuity. The consecutive eight months computes to 240 paid days.

Note: So far, there has been no case laws notified for the above 190/less than 6 days work week for Non-hazardous jobs (scenario) in both HC / SC; the last being a mandate to adhere to 4 years and 240 days as minimum criteria.

Hope, hereon, all legal intellectual forums, social media forums ensure depth interpretations and not a mislead maneuvers.



Learning

 1 Replies

Isaac Gabriel (Advocate)     01 September 2020

Circumstaces so far nor surfaced as mentioned, therefore no case laws cold be cited.Neverthless,you can raise issues with apprpriate forums for decisions/clarifications.


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