IMPORTANT POINT
Mandamus could not be issued in favour of employees directing the government to make them permanent or regularised since employees can not show that they had an enforceable legal right to be permanently absorbed or that State had a legal duty to make them permanent.

JUDGMENT

Arijit Pasayat, J. - Leave granted.

2. Challenge in this appeal is to the order passed by a Division Bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court at Jabalpur in Writ Petition No. 1974 of 1998. Appellants had challenged the composite order dated 13.11.1997 passed in OA No. 691 of 1995 and O.A. No.89 of 1996 passed by the Central Administrative Tribunal, Jabalpur Bench, at Jabalpur (in short the CAT). The respondents moved the CAT under Section 19 of the Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985 (in short the Act) seeking regularization of their services.

3. Stand of the respondents before the CAT was that they have been performing their duties as Data Entry Operators on contract basis and were being paid at a rate of Rs.10 per hour up to the maximum of Rs.50 per day. Since they have been working since a long period they sought for regularization placing reliance on the factum of long rendition of service.

4. In response, present appellants contended that the respondents were not departmental employees and their grievances cannot be agitated before the CAT. Placing reliance on some other decisions by the CAT, the stand of the present appellants was turned down and direction was given for considering the cases of appointment on regular basis.

5. A writ petition was filed before the High Court, which was dismissed by the impugned order.

6. In support of the appeal learned counsel for the appellants submitted that the decision of the High Court is contrary to law as laid down by the Constitution Bench of this Court in Secretary, State of Karnataka and Others v. Uma Devi and Others [2006 (4) SCC 1]. Learned counsel for the respondents on the other hand submitted that since the CAT had relied on an earlier judgment, High Court rightly did not find any distinguishable feature, and the appeal, therefore, deserves to be dismissed.

7. The question of regularization on the ground of long rendition of service was the subject matter in Uma Devis case (supra). The said issue has been elaborately dealt with in the judgment. It was inter alia held as follows:

"33. It is not necessary to notice all the decisions of this Court on this aspect. By and large what emerges is that regular recruitment should be insisted upon, only in a contingency an ad hoc appointment can be made in a permanent vacancy, but the same should soon be followed by a regular recruitment and that appointments to non-available posts should not be taken note of for regularization. The cases directing regularization have mainly proceeded on the basis that having permitted the employee to work for some period, he should be absorbed, without really laying down any law to that effect, after discussing the constitutional scheme for public employment.

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45. While directing that appointments, temporary or casual, be regularized or made permanent, courts are swayed by the fact that the concerned person has worked for some time and in some cases for a considerable length of time. It is not as if the person who accepts an engagement either temporary or casual in nature, is not aware of the nature of his employment. He accepts the employment with eyes open. It may be true that he is not in a position to bargain -- not at arms length -- since he might have been searching for some employment so as to eke out his livelihood and accepts whatever he gets. But on that ground alone, it would not be appropriate to jettison the Page 1946 constitutional scheme of appointment and to take the view that a person who has temporarily or casually got employed should be directed to be continued permanently. By doing so, it will be creating another mode of public appointment which is not permissible. If the court were to void a contractual employment of this nature on the ground that the parties were not having equal bargaining power, that too would not enable the court to grant any relief to that employee. A total embargo on such casual or temporary employment is not possible, given the exigencies of