The permanent status accorded to a daily wager employee entitles them to benefits available to regular employees.

JUDGMENT :

1. RULE returnable forthwith. Mr.Krutik Parikh learned AGP waives service of notice of Rule on behalf of the respondent State.

2. With the consent of learned advocates for the respective parties, the petition is taken up for final hearing.

3. By way of this petition under Article 226 of the Constitution of India, the case of the petitioner is that she is the widow of the deceased employee who was working as a daily wager and died on 24.11.2020. When the petitioner applied for lump-sum compensation on the death of her husband, by the impugned order dated 23.05.2021, her case was rejected on the ground that since the husband of the petitioner was a daily wager who earned the benefits of the resolution dated 17.10.1988, his case would not fall within the purview of resolution dated 05.07.2011.

4. By decision rendered by this Court on 14.02.2022 in Special Civil Application Nos.11554 and 12746 of 2021, the Court had considered extensively the decisions rendered by this Court on the earlier occasions and thereafter the Court held as under:

“6 Having considered the submissions made by the learned counsels for the respective parties, it will be apt to consider the first decision in line rendered by this Court (Coram : Hon’ble Ms. Justice Abhilasha Kumari, J.) in Special Civil Application No. 1795 of 2013. Therein too, the claim of the petitioner for financial benefits in lieu of compensation were denied. After extensively hearing the parties, the Court opined that it was strange for the respondents to contend that the services of the petitioner were regularized and were converted into “permanent daily wager”. There is no concept of permanent daily wager. Extensively relying on the decision in the case of State of Gujarat and ors vs. Mahendarakumar Bhagwandas, which was reproduced in para 9 of the decision, the Court in no uncertain terms held that there was no concept of permanent daily wager. The relevant paras 8 to 11 of the decision reads as under:

“8. A strange ground is taken in Paragraph7 of the affidavit-in-reply filed by respondent No.2, wherein it is stated that the “service of the petitioner was regularised and his service was converted as permanent daily-wager”. There is no concept of a “permanent daily-wager” in service jurisprudence. What the term “permanent daily-wager” means can only be explained by the second respondent. Mr.Niraj Ashar, learned Assistant Government Pleader, has remained unsuccessful in satisfying this query of the Court. In the order dated 28.03.2008, whereby the services of the petitioner's father were made permanent, respondent No.2 has used the word “permanent” and not “permanent daily-wager”. The term “permanent daily-wager”, therefore, appears to have been coined by respondent No.2, presumably with a view to taking the case of the petitioner out of the scope and ambit of the Government Resolution dated 05.07.2011.

9. The nomenclature of “permanent daily-wage employee” came up for discussion before the Division Bench of this Court in the case of State of Gujarat & Anr V. Mahendrakumar Bhagvandas & Anr., reported in 2011 (2) GLR 1290. This is what the Division Bench held:

“5. ...Once the employees concerned were, in fact, treated for all purposes as permanent employees in terms of G.R. dated 17.10.1988, any discrimination or denial of benefits for a segment of such employees, who were subsequently re-branded as “daily wager” (rojamdar) by G.R. dated 18.7.1994, could not be rationally explained and could not be countenanced in the face of Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution. Nor can the State Government legally take away the rights conferred and benefits, already accorded to the employees concerned by or under a subsequent government resolution, which expressly supersedes earlier instructions and not earlier G.R. dated 17.10.1988 by which the benefits were accorded to the employees. It also sounds absurd and baseless that employee employed on daily wage basis for 15 years would be made permane