Dear Ajay,
Primary duty of any HR Manager is to manage to the performance of the people working in his/her company, derive maximum value from the people etc. Knowledge of legal aspects is secondary. In this secondary level also PF/ESI comes little later. I say so because even if some mistakes happen in PF/ESI calculations, there is scope to correct these. By chance if there are notices from PF or ESI officers then there is scope to write back or correct the anomaly.
Whereas there are legal issues because of which companies entangle in the legal hassles or image of the organisation comes under the cloud. Therefore, knowledge of employee discipline, how to handle domestic enquiry etc is far more important.
Take the case of following news report:
Pay techie Rs 12.5 lakh for sacking her, Karnataka labour department orders US-based firm <link updated to site home> ( Search On Cite | Search On Google ) .
The unsaid part of the news is that those who worked in HR Department did not know the legal consequences of sacking an employee. The whole issue was botched up because leadership did not bother about the laws that protect the workers' rights.
Thanks,
Dinesh Divekar