Regularisation benefits: SC pulls up J&K officials for non-compliance of high court order
Terming it a “glaring and textbook example of obstination”, the Supreme Court has pulled up Jammu and Kashmir officials for failing to comply with a high court order over the regularisation of daily-wagers.
“We are constrained to observe that the present case is a glaring and textbook example of obstination exhibited by the state officials/authorities, who consider themselves to be above and beyond the reach of law,” a Bench of Justice Surya Kant and Justice N Kotiswar Singh said in its March 7 order.
Instead of complying with the 2007 order of the high court for the regularisation of daily-wagers, who worked between 14-19 years in the Rural Development Department, the Jammu and Kashmir authorities kept on passing “cryptic orders” to harass them.
The inaction of the officials, who took about 16 years to comply with a “simpliciter high court order” of May 3, 2007, was “shocking and prima facie contemptuous”, it said, refusing to interfere with the Rs 25,000 cost imposed by the high court’s division Bench. The officials ought to be “strictly” dealt with, it said.
“However, what concerns us is not the delay of decades alone, but also the incontrovertible fact that the poor respondents, being daily-wage workers, have been repeatedly harassed by the petitioners by passing cryptic orders, thereby overlooking the true import and spirit of the order dated May 3, 2007, passed by a single judge,” it said.
The high court on December 4, 2024, denied the relief to the Union Territory against the October 16, 2024, order of the single judge in a contempt plea filed by daily-wagers in 2010 saying authorities hadn’t complied with the 2007 order.
As the counsel for the UT administration said the single judge ordered the arrest of the officials concerned, the top court said, “That’s good. The single judge has rightly done so.”
Noting that the case was “fit for imposing exemplary costs on the delinquent officers”, aside from recommending strong disciplinary action against them, the Bench said, “We presently refrain ourselves from doing so, keeping in view the fact that the contempt proceedings are still pending before the single judge. We, consequently, request the single judge to take up the contempt proceedings on a weekly basis and ensure that majesty and sanctity of law is maintained.”
A group of daily-wagers in the Rural Development Department in 2006 moved the high court seeking regularisation of their jobs on the ground that they have worked between 14 to 19 years and were aggrieved that their services were not regularised in terms of SRO 64 of 1994 despite repeated requests.
They sought their services to be regularised from the dates they were entitled for regularisation aside from payment of wages.
