Conflicting views on regularisation of ad hoc employees led the court to refer the matter to a three-Judge Bench for appropriate appreciation of the legal position.

( 1 ) THIS bunch of appeals is against the judgments of the High Court of karnataka, in some of which the Court has directed regularisation of the ad hoc employees or their consideration for regularisation while in some other appeals the request for regularisation has been refused. It is indicated by the learned counsel for both sides that the number of employees involved would be in thousands, maybe 30,000 to 40,000, in different departments of the state Government. So far as the position of law relating to the regularisation of the ad hoc employees is concerned, it is submitted that there are conflicting views of this Court between the decisions of Benches consisting of two Judges and three Judges. In this connection reference has been made to two decisions of this Court rendered by three-Judge Benches, namely, ashwani Kumar v. State of Bihar and State of Haryana v. Piara Singh. It is submitted that in both these decisions it has been held that regularisation is possible only against sanctioned or permanent vacancies. If such vacancies are not available or the candidates lack in eligibility or qualifications in any manner, then too it would not be possible to order for regularisation of such employees, besides the requirement of compliance with selection procedure. Thus, long duration of service would not be a relevant consideration to regularise the services. On this point our attention has been drawn to a recent two-Judge Bench decision of this Court in Chanchal Goyal (Dr.) v. State of rajasthan.

( 2 ) IN Gujarat Agricultural University v. Rathod Labhu Bechat (a two-Judge Bench decision) this Court has approved the view of the Single judge of the High Court inferring permanent nature of the work on the basis of long continuance of service and the vastness of the establishment of the employer. It has also been observed: (SCC p. 585, para 17)

"if the work is of such a nature, which has to be taken continuously and in any case when this pattern becomes apparent, while they continue to work for year after year, the only option to the employer is to regularise them. "on coming to the above conclusion, reliance was placed upon a decision of this Court in Bhagwati Prasad v. Delhi State Mineral Development Corpn. which is a three-Judge Bench decision. In this case also, in view of the long duration of work by means of which the employees had gathered practical experience, it was held that the minimum educational qualification prescribed for the post would not come in the way of regularisation of the employees. There are some decisions taking different views, on the question of cut-off date as provided under the scheme for regularisation, in connection whereof a reference has been made to a decision of this Court in A. K. Jain (Dr.) v. Union of India.

( 3 ) LOOKING to the position as it stands under the law regarding regularisation, namely, different views expressed in different decisions of this court, we feel that it would be appropriate that the matter may be heard by a three-Judge Bench, so as to appropriately appreciate the legal position and decide the matter accordingly.

( 4 ) LET the papers be placed before Honble the Chief Justice of India for constituting a three-Judge Bench for the purpose. Court Masters