Consider employees’ regularisation as per 2003, 2011 policies: HC

Employees working on ad-hoc, contractual, or daily wage basis in Haryana’s municipal committees and public sector companies are set to benefit from the Punjab and Haryana High Court’s directive to the State to consider their regularisation under the 2003 and 2011 policies. Some of these employees had worked or were working for more than three decades.

Disposing of a bunch of 151 petitions, Justice Jagmohan Bansal asserted that the respondent-State could not claim non-availability of regular posts. “The posts are created by the State and not by some unknown force. The court cannot ask the State to create or abolish a post or structure/restructure a cadre,” the court asserted.

Referring to the Supreme Court judgment on the issue in Uma Devi’s case, Justice Bansal asserted that the State, nevertheless, could not ignore its mandate and was duty bound to consider all employees “who by the end of 2006 had already completed service of 10 years without court intervention”.

He ruled no employee could be regularised under the 1996 policy, as it was neither withdrawn nor reintroduced. The court held that employees eligible for regularisation under the 2003 policy but were not regularised due to administrative reasons should now be considered for regularisation.

Justice Bansal said: "The respondent shall consider and decide the claim of petitioners, within six months from today, who are claiming regularisation as per policy of 2003”. These employees would be entitled to arrears from the date of filing the petition without interest, if found eligible.

The Bench added pensionary benefits would be fixed/revised, apart from arrears from the date of filing of the petition if a petitioner had already retired. “It is made clear that this court has not declared that policy of 2003 is applicable to each instrumentality of the state government. The competent authority of each organisation would independently examine this aspect and employee would be granted opportunity of hearing if any adverse opinion is formed,” the court added.

Justice Bansal also directed the State to consider the claims of employees seeking regularisation under the 2011 policy. He observed that the policy required employees to have completed 10 years of service by April 10, 2006, but the claims were rejected following marginal shortfall.

“The petitioners are claiming that marginal shortfall should be ignored, especially in view of the fact that as per the judgment of the Supreme Court in Uma Devi 's case, the policy was required to be framed within six months from the date of judgment, whereas respondent framed it in 2011 after the expiry of five years from the date of judgment. The respondent should consider 10 years’ service as on the date of introduction of 2011 policy,” Justice Bansal asserted, while setting a six-month deadline for considering and deciding the claim. The court clarified that employees regularised through fresh appointment letters in 2014 could not claim retrospective regularisation under the 2003 or 2011 policies.