New Delhi, India: The Supreme Court has ordered the Uttar Pradesh government to regularise six daily-wage Class-IV employees who had been serving in the state higher education services commission since the early 1990s.Coming down heavily on the state for decades of exploitative “ad-hocism,” a Bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta quashed a government order that had denied sanction for permanent posts citing financial hardships.The Bench held that the plea of financial constraints could not justify the prolonged denial of regularisation. “The State is not a mere market participant but a constitutional employer. It cannot balance budgets on the backs of those who perform the most basic and recurring public functions,” the court observed.Rejecting the state’s justification, the court said that a generic plea of “financial constraints,” ignoring functional necessity and decades of reliance on daily wagers to discharge regular duties, fell short of the reasonableness expected from a model public institution.It clarified that the present judgment does not contradict its earlier rulings against regularisation of irregular appointments, since the case involved the State’s arbitrary refusal to sanction posts despite its acknowledged need and long-standing dependence on the petitioners’ services.The apex court directed the Uttar Pradesh government and the U.P. Education Services Selection Commission to regularise the petitioners with effect from April 24, 2002, by creating supernumerary posts if necessary.It also ordered payment of arrears of pay and allowances, recalculated pensions for retirees, and settlement of terminal dues for the families of deceased employees.“The long-term extraction of regular labour under temporary labels corrodes confidence in public administration and offends the promise of equal protection,” the Bench observed. IANS
