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State of Uttar Pradesh & Ors. v. Mohd. Suleman Siddiqui

Civil Appeal · 2019 INSC 185Decided 12 Feb 2019
Civil Appeal Nos. 4262-4263 of 2015
Dr. Justice D.Y. Chandrachud · Justice Hemant Gupta

Background

The respondent was engaged in 1991 as a daily-wage registration clerk in the UP Registration Department and was later disengaged. After earlier rounds of litigation, including a remand from the Supreme Court itself, the Allahabad High Court in 1999 set aside his termination and directed consequential benefits, but did not find that he had ever been appointed on a regular (permanent) basis. Decades later, after a pending criminal case against him ended in a compromise-based acquittal, his representation seeking continuation/regularisation was rejected by the Inspector General (Registration); a Single Judge of the High Court quashed that rejection and granted full consequential benefits, and the State's delayed appeal against that order was dismissed by the Division Bench on limitation grounds alone.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that the record never established that the respondent was appointed on a regular basis: he was, and remained, only a daily-wage employee, and a related batch of appeals (Special Appeal 385/2005, decided in 2017) had already rejected the plea for regularisation of similarly placed daily wagers. The Court clarified that the High Court's quashing of the 2011 rejection order did not amount to a mandamus for regularisation; its only effect was that, absent a valid termination order, the respondent continued to be treated as in service on a daily-wage basis. The Court therefore disposed of the appeals by directing that any arrears of daily wages due to the respondent (computed from the date he filed his 2011 writ petition) be paid within three months, with no order as to costs.

Lesson Learnt

Being allowed to continue working after a termination order is quashed does not automatically convert a daily-wage or ad-hoc employee into a regular/permanent employee: regularisation requires a specific finding or order to that effect, and courts will look at the actual service record rather than assume permanency from long continuance.

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

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