Dear Colleague,
Very well said and narrated by our Colleague on this important Subject.
"Consultants" can perform a range of duties that may vary considerably depending on the industry. In a nutshell, consultants provide expert opinions, analysis, and recommendations to organizations or individuals, based on their own expertise. They’re essentially fixers, serving as objective troubleshooters, and providing strategies to prevent problems and improve performance. They are to be clearly demarcated from " Employee" Hence you need to be judicious and frame the Contract very carefully. In practice Consultants are not to be extended anything other than Consulting Charges and there should be no working time, working days, leave and other perks. Better to engage then on a Consolidated pay or per visit charges like.
Some of the organizations engaged consultants but extended few benefits were later forced to treat then as Employee as the terms were not framed with clarity. Only in the Word they were Consultants but in reality they were Regular Employees. Few organizations were asked to pay huge statutory dues with retrospective effect. Hence kindly give deep thought and handle this type of engagement.