Rupesh R. Gaonkar and Others v. State of Goa
Background
Since as early as 1967, hundreds of workers were engaged by Goa's Public Works Department (PWD) through a labour society the government itself set up to end contractor-based exploitation and eventually regularise these workers' jobs. Over the following decades the State repeatedly took steps toward absorbing them, including a 2014 government order granting them "temporary status" with pay parity to regular staff, but never completed regularisation, and the Bombay High Court at Goa ultimately ruled against the workers, saying the 2014 order lacked proper government approval. The workers appealed to the Supreme Court.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court sided with the workers, holding that the State's own sustained conduct over decades (creating the labour society, freezing new recruitment pending their absorption, and granting temporary status with equal pay) showed a clear, consistent intention to regularise them, and the government could not now hide behind an internal procedural defect in the 2014 order that it never disclosed to the workers at the time. The Court held this was a genuine one-time regularisation case (not the "backdoor illegal appointment" scenario that the landmark Umadevi ruling was meant to prevent), directed the State to frame a regularisation scheme within four months, create additional posts if needed, and treat the workers as regularised from February 2021, though back-pay arrears were denied.
Lesson Learnt
A government cannot enjoy the benefit of decades of a worker's labour, take repeated official steps toward making that job permanent, and then walk away by pointing to its own internal paperwork lapse: long, consistent government conduct can itself create an enforceable right to regularisation.