Sandhya Saluja (and connected WAPCOS employee petitions) vs. Union of India & Ors.
Background
Sandhya Saluja and many other contractual employees of WAPCOS (a public-sector engineering company) had their engagements, some running ten to sixteen years through repeated renewals, brought to an end after WAPCOS decided in November 2025 to stop extending contractual staff, followed by termination notices in January 2026 invoking a one-month notice clause. The employees argued that WAPCOS's own Recruitment & Promotion Rules entitled contractual staff who completed five years' service to be considered (though not automatically absorbed) for regular appointment, a provision WAPCOS had never applied to them despite renewing their contracts for years and having regularised roughly 195 other contractual employees in the past.
Decision Breakdown
The Court upheld WAPCOS's November 2025 policy as a legitimate forward-looking decision but struck down the January 2026 termination notices to the extent they cut short contracts WAPCOS itself had already granted before their agreed expiry. It divided the petitioners into three categories: those with about ten years' service or more ("Category A") must be regularised (subject to limited verification of entry mode and qualifications) and given a personal supernumerary post if no vacancy exists; those who crossed five years but not ten ("Category B") must have their cases genuinely considered by a Selection Committee under the company's own rules, continuing on contract meanwhile; and those under five years' service ("Category C") have no claim under this Rule. The Court held that long, repeated retention by an employer of contractual staff without ever applying its own regularisation mechanism cannot be ignored merely because the initial appointment was contractual.
Lesson Learnt
A public-sector employer that keeps renewing a worker's contract for years, especially beyond a threshold fixed in its own service rules, cannot rely on the "contractual" label alone to deny that worker fair consideration for a permanent post, but this does not automatically confer permanent status by itself; the length of service and the employer's own rules determine what relief follows.