New Delhi, April 10
In a judgement of far-reaching consequences for lakhs of daily-wage employees engaged by state governments in the country, a five-Judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, today held that such workers could not claim a right of regularisation through judicial verdict.
The judgement was delivered by a Bench comprising Chief Justice Y K Sabharwal and Justices Arun Kumar, G P Mathur, C K Thakker and P K Balasubramanyan while allowing a bunch of appeals by the Karnataka Government against the state high court order, directing it to regularise all those daily-wage workers in various departments who had completed uninterrupted service of 10 years.
Setting aside the order of 1999, the Bench said under the law such workers had no right to claim regularisation despite working for years. But the detailed judgement was not immediately available.
Mr Justice Balasubramanyan, who read out the operative part of the judgement on behalf of the Bench, said the court had laid down certain directions regarding regularisation and experience required for government jobs.
The Bench decided four important questions, framed by it, in the light of state governments resorting to employing a large number of workers on daily wages without going through the selection and recruitment process for appointing government officials laid down in the law.
The main questions
answered by the court are: (a) should not the proper selection and appointment procedure laid down in the law be insisted upon and should any appointment be made outside the recruitment rules and recognised as valid for making similar appointed workers permanent, or would it not amount to subversion of the constitutional scheme, (b) what is a distinction between regularisation and confirmation, (c) can courts direct regularisation in exercise of writ jurisdiction, (d) to what extent the appointments made without the laid down procedure of the service rules or in breach of statutory provision can be recognised by courts and given judicial approval.
Meanwhile, in two identical cases pertaining to regularisation claim by daily-wage employees in the Irrigation Department in Himachal Pradesh, the apex court today directed maintenance of status quo in their service till further hearing. Identical orders were also passed by the court with regard to three cases of daily-wage earners in the PWD from the state earlier.
