Sukhendu Bhattacharjee and Others v. The State of Assam and Others
Background
The appellants were engaged by the Government of Assam as "Muster Roll" and "Work Charged" workers (daily-wage manual/field workers for road construction and maintenance) before April 1993, and had served continuously for decades. In 2005, the State's Cabinet decided to regularize about 30,000 similarly-placed workers, but the appellants were left out due to administrative lapses. The Gauhati High Court's Single Judge had directed their regularization, but the Division Bench reversed this, holding that since the appellants were not appointed against formally sanctioned posts, they could not benefit from the "one-time measure" exception for regularization carved out by the Supreme Court's earlier landmark ruling in State of Karnataka v. Umadevi. The workers appealed to the Supreme Court.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court held that the appellants' situation was indistinguishable from the roughly 30,000 workers already regularized under the 2005 Cabinet decision, and that excluding them due to the State's own clerical/administrative errors was manifestly arbitrary and violated Article 14 (equality). It clarified that Umadevi does not bar regularization of "irregular" (as opposed to "illegal") long-serving appointments, and criticized the practice of governments using "temporary"/"muster roll" labels for decades to deny workers job security and benefits while extracting essentially permanent, regular work from them. The Court set aside the Division Bench's judgment and restored the Single Judge's order, directing that the appellants be treated as regularized retroactive to when the other 30,000 workers benefited, with the State required to create supernumerary posts if needed, extend full consequential and pensionary benefits, and complete the entire exercise within one year. It also separately clarified, in connected appeals dealt with in the same judgment, that "Work Charged" employees who were not heard in the earlier proceedings should be treated as a distinct class whose pension claims remain open, and set aside a related High Court order that had relied on the now-overturned 2017 judgment.
Lesson Learnt
Governments cannot indefinitely keep employees on "temporary" or "muster roll" labels while extracting decades of regular, essential work from them, and then deny them regularization on technical grounds: long, continuous, unblemished service performing regular government functions creates a right to fair and equal treatment under Article 14, especially once similarly-placed colleagues have already been regularized.