HC rips into Punjab, Haryana for ‘policy to circumvent court rulings on regularisation’

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has come down heavily on the “policy of circumvention” by the states of Punjab and Haryana in matters of regularising long-serving temporary and contractual employees.

Justice Harpreet Singh Brar observed that both states “tend to formulate policies in order to circumvent implementation of judgments rendered by the constitutional courts,” thereby keeping employees “in limbo unnecessarily”. The bench warned that the practice of keeping workers on ad-hoc or daily-wage rolls for decades while extracting regular work was “unconstitutional and violative of equality and dignity”.

Justice Brar asserted: “More often than not, the claim for regularisation is neither accepted nor denied and the applicant is kept in limbo unnecessarily. The extended ad hocism of keeping daily wage workers or contractual employees on temporary rolls for decades while extracting regular work is not only unconstitutional but undermines equality and dignity.”

Justice Brar further cautioned that the state and its instrumentalities – being model employers – could not perpetuate such exploitation. The bench rejected the habitual justifications of financial constraints, non-availability of sanctioned posts, lack of qualification, or attempts to rely on the Supreme Court’s ruling to deny regularisation.

“The state and its instrumentalities being model employer can’t perpetuate such exploitation and use excuses like financial constraints, non-availability of sanctioned post, and lack of qualification or decision in a case as talisman to deny well-deserved regularisation on account of their perennial nature of long periods of work at par with their counterparts working on regular posts,” Justice Brar asserted.

The observations came as Justice Brar allowed the petition of a worker, who had rendered over 28 years of continuous service, including more than a decade looking after the maintenance work of water supply and sewerage — described by the court as “perennial and essential in nature”.

After hearing counsel Dhiraj Chawla and Mehak Sharma on the petitioner’s behalf and the rival contentions by the state, Justice Brar held that the petitioner’s services could not be denied regularisation merely because of the absence of a policy reference when the nature of work itself was permanent and recurring.

“This court has been constrained to observe a trend where long term employees are engaged on ad hoc basis, in spite of the perennial nature of the services rendered by them. The state, being a constitutional employer, cannot be allowed to exploit its temporary employees under the garb of lack of sanctioned posts or inability of the employees to meet educational qualifications for regular posts, when they have been consistently serving its instrumentality for a significant time period,” Justice Brar observed.

The bench added that temporary employees “cannot be forced to bear the brunt of lack of financial resources, when the state had no qualms about continuously taking advantage of their services”. The petitioner was also held entitled to the counting of past service and consequential benefits in line with earlier judgments.