BJP govt to approach SC against HC verdict

HIGH COURT HAD SET ASIDE FOUR POLICIES OF REGULARISATION OF CONTRACTUTAL STAFF APPROVED BY THE PREVIOUS CONGRESS GOVERNMENT

CHANDIGARH : Even as the decision of the previous Congress regime in Haryana to approve the regularisation of over 20,000 contractual employees was done in complete disregard of Supreme Court guidelines and consequently set aside by the Punjab and Haryana high court last week, the BJP government has decided to file an appeal in the apex court against the HC order.

Stating that the government would file an appeal in the apex court, chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar said on Sunday that the government had strongly pleaded for the regularisation policy before the HC, but the court set it aside due to shortcomings in the policy under which the employees were regularised.

“We do not want the recruitments to be cancelled”, Khattar said in a statement.

The Hooda cabinet’s decision to regularise the services of ad hoc Group B employees whose services could not regularised under a 1996 policy was defective as the state government had withdrawn this policy in 1997 in view of the Supreme Court orders. Strangely, no legal opinion was sought by the state government on this aspect.

The apex court had in October 1997 (P Ravindran vs UT of Pondicherry case) had deprecated the practice of regularisation of services of ad hoc employees as a substitute for the appointees recommended by the public service commission.

The then Congress government had also ignored the advice of the law department while deciding the regularisation of leftover Group C and D employees working on ad hoc basis or on contract, who were once eligible under the regularisation policies of June 1997, November 1999, October 2003 and February 2004, but could not be regularised due to administrative reasons.

The law secretary, in his advice on a query whether these leftover employees once eligible under the policies of 1997, 1999, 2003 and 2004 can be regularised had said: “The policies as mentioned in this query having been rescinded vide notification of April 13, 2007, and the same having been done in view of the Supreme Court orders in the ‘State of Karnataka v/s Uma Devi’ case, this query is answered in the negative.”

The apex court in the Uma Devi case had delivered a landmark judgment on the issue of regularisation of services of temporary, ad hoc, daily-wage and contract employees. It held that merely because an employee continued under the cover of a court order, under litigious employment or continued beyond the term of his appointment by the state or its instrumentalities, he would not be entitled to any right to be absorbed or made permanent in service merely on the strength of such continuance if the original appointment was not made by following a due process of selection as envisaged by the relevant rules.