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Prem Ram v. Managing Director, Uttarakhand Pey Jal & Nirman Nigam & Ors.

Civil Appeal · Neutral citation not assigned (Civil Appeal No. 4474 of 2015)Decided 15 May 2015
Civil Appeal No. 4474 of 2015
Justice T.S. Thakur · Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel

Background

Prem Ram was appointed as a daily-wager in the erstwhile U.P. Pey Jal & Nirman Nigam in 1988, but his services were illegally terminated in 1997. The Labour Court set aside the termination and ordered reinstatement with continuity of service, and he worked as a daily-wager until his superannuation. In 2008, he sought regularisation effective from 2003, pointing out that several colleagues junior to him had already been regularised, but the High Court (both at Single Judge and Division Bench level) rejected his claim, relying on the Supreme Court's Umadevi (3) ruling and noting there was no formal regularisation scheme and that his juniors had been regularised as "work-charged" employees, a different category from daily-wagers.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court found that the distinction the employer drew between "daily-wagers" and "work-charged employees" was not based on any real, principled criterion, counsel for the respondent could not explain on what basis workers were assigned to one category or the other, and held the two categories should be treated alike for regularisation purposes. Since the appellant had completed over ten years of service by the time of the Umadevi (3) judgment, and the government itself had since framed Regularisation Rules without objecting to regularising long-serving daily-wagers, the Court held there was no valid reason to deny him the same benefit given to his juniors. It allowed the appeal, set aside the High Court's orders, and directed regularisation of his service (and retiral benefits) with effect from the date his juniors were regularised, but made clear he could not claim arrears of salary for the regularisation period, and left each side to bear its own costs.

Lesson Learnt

An employer cannot defeat a long-serving worker's claim to regularisation by drawing an artificial distinction between job categories (e.g., "daily-wager" vs. "work-charged") that has no real basis in practice: if similarly-placed juniors were regularised, a senior employee wrongly denied the same treatment can get it corrected by courts, even though back wages for the intervening period may not be recoverable.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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