25,000 contractual employees in Punjab to be regularised

Ruchika M Khanna

Chandigarh, September 5

Around 25,000 contractual employees of the Punjab government, who have completed 10 years of service, will be regularised by the Aam Aadmi Party government, as the Punjab Council of Ministers accepted the report on regularisation of employees on Monday.

The first set of contractual employees to be regularised will be from the Education department, from today onwards. 

While 8,000 contractual employees working in the Education department stand to benefit, 6,000 more in the Health department would be regularised. Employees in the Transport and Power departments will also benefit. The employees to be regularised will get basic pay for first three years of service, as per a previous policy of the Punjab government. This policy will be a one-time policy, said top government officials. This means that only those employees who have completed 10 years of service will be regularised.

Each department will bring out a separate policy for regularisation of its contractual employees, and will have a separate special cadre. 

These employees are being regularised by bringing them under a separate cadre. The state government will have to bear an additional expenditure of over Rs 400 crore, by regularising the services of these contractual employees.

The three-member cabinet sub-committee headed by Finance Minister Harpal Cheema submitted its report to the cabinet headed by Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann on Monday morning.

The committee has recommended that the government start regularising employees through a policy. This has been done to circumvent the Uma Devi vs State of Karnataka case, because of which two other laws framed by the previous two governments of Congress and Akali Dal- BJP, could not be enacted.