No Assured Career Progression for work-charged, daily wage employees: High Court

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has made it clear that daily wage/work-charged service rendered by an employee cannot be counted under the grant of Assured Career Progression (ACP) scheme.

The scheme provides financial benefits to government employees in the form of financial upgradations. It is intended to help employees facing stagnation or hardships due to lack of promotional opportunities.

The ruling by the Bench of Justice Sureshwar Thakur and Justice Sudeepti Sharma came on a bunch of petitions against the Union of India, the Union Territory of Chandigarh and other respondents. The petitioner in one of the pleas was seeking directions to the respondents to grant admissible benefits, including the ACP scheme, fixed medical allowance, leave encashment and local travelling allowance her “deceased husband” was entitled to following his deemed regularization in service.

Directions were also sought to disburse the benefits to her by revising family pension and other pensionary benefits.

Referring to a plethora of Supreme Court’s decisions, the Bench made it clear that work-charged employees, whose roles and funding were project-specific, did not qualify for benefits accorded to regular employees. The court quoted the judgments as saying work-charged service could not merge with regular service for the calculation of ACP or other financial benefits unless expressly stated by statutory provisions or schemes.

The high court also referred a Division Bench ruling in Surjit Kaur’s case, which reaffirmed distinctions between regular and ad-hoc service. It also reproduced relevant portions from the judgment in the case of Punjab State Electricity Board and others versus Jagjiwan Ram and others clarifying that an employee became member of regular establishment from the date of regularization, if his work-charged service was regularized under any statute or a scheme framed by the employer.

His service in the work charged establishment could not be clubbed with service in a regular establishment unless a specific provision to that effect was made either in the relevant statute or the scheme of regularization.

“In other words, if the statute or scheme under which service of work-charged employee is regularized does not provide for counting of past service, the work-charged employee cannot claim benefit of such service for the purpose of fixation of seniority in the regular cadre, promotion to the higher posts, fixation of pay in the higher scales, grant of increments etc”.

Before parting with the order, the Bench added, “The services rendered by the petitioners on daily wage/work charged cannot be counted for the purposes of grant of ACP. Therefore, the present writ petitions are dismissed.”