CUTTACK: The Orissa High Court has quashed a decades-old decision of the state government that had denied regular status to more than a 100 employees, directing that they be treated as regularised with retrospective effect from 1994.
In its order dated April 20, the High Court held that the government’s action lacked fairness, violated principles of natural justice and reflected what it termed a “colonial mindset” in its treatment of workers. The web copy of the judgment was made available on Thursday.
The court found that 105 people had been engaged as casual labourers during 1992-93 through a selection process and were subsequently regularised by a series of orders issued by the director of Printing, Stationery and Publication in January and February 1994. However, within weeks, the director placed the regularisation orders in abeyance on April 7, 1994, triggering litigation.
The affected employees approached the State Administrative Tribunal (SAT), which, by an interim order dated April 8, 1994, stayed the abeyance order. The authority thereafter suspended its own decision, effectively restoring the earlier regularisation.
Despite these developments, the Tribunal failed to conclusively resolve the issue and later the litigation was transferred to the High Court following abolition of SAT in 2019.
Delivering the judgment on two separate petitions, one by 94 employees filed in 1994 and another by eight employees in 2012, the two-judge bench of Justices Krishna Shripad Dixit and Chittaranjan Dash quashed both the 1994 abeyance order issued by the director of Printing, Stationery & Publication and a later SAT order, terming them legally unsustainable.
The bench observed that once the abeyance order had itself been kept in abeyance, the matter had effectively become redundant. Even otherwise, the Tribunal should have invalidated the April 7 order for violating natural justice, as no fair procedure was followed before depriving the workers of their regular status, the bench added.
Considering the passage of time, the court noted that 57 employees had since retired and 21 have died, while 26 are still in service. Accordingly, the bench directed the state to extend full service and monetary benefits to all affected people from 1994 onwards, including payment of dues to retirees and families of deceased employees within three months.
Emphasising the employees were duly selected, qualified and had worked for years without complaint, the bench rejected the state’s argument that their appointments were irregular or against non-existent posts.
This report was published from a syndicated wire feed. Apart from the headline, the EdexLive Desk has not edited the copy.
