Point of Law: Petitioners shall be continued through RMRS and no placement agency shall be brought in as an employer.

ORDER :

1. This bunch of Writ Petitions has been preferred by claiming the following reliefs:

“(i) Impugned order dated 28.08.2020 (Annex.13) may kindly be quashed and set-aside.

(ii) Impugned order dated 17.07.2020 (Annex.12) may kindly be quashed and set aside.

(iii) Impugned order dated 09.04.2020 (Annex.11) may kindly be quashed and set aside.

(iv) impugned communication dated 31.03.2020 (Annex.10) may kindly be quashed and set aside.

(v) the respondents may kindly be directed to allow the petitioners to serve continuously at their respective place of posting through Rajasthan Medical and Relief Society on the post of Man With Machine.

(vi) the respondents may kindly be directed to pay the remuneration to the petitioners directly through RMRS and not through the placement agency.

(vii) the respondents may kindly be directed to pay full salary to the petitioners.”

2. Particularly, the issue involved in the present matters is that the petitioners are working on various posts on contractual basis with the medical department. The following Schedule, indisputably, shows the position of the petitioners.

3. The following facts are not in dispute:

1. The petitioners are contractual employees

2. The petitioners are required for running the primary health centre and community health centre.

3. The petitioners have been appointed through placement agency/service providers.

4. The petitioners at this stage are claiming that they be continued through RMRS.

5. There is a judgment of a coordinate Bench of this Court passed in Jai Prakash Ghanchi vs. State of Rajasthan and Others (S.B. Civil Writ Petition No. 7273/2020, decided on 19.01.2021), which has not been challenged and is invoked. Relevant portion of the judgment reads as under:

“14. In considered opinion of this Court, the concern shown rather grievance raised by the petitioners is genuine and the State’s action/attempt of deploying placement agencies as intermediary agencies between the petitioners and the State Government, is arbitrary, as has already been held by this Court.

15. That apart, when the State itself has come up with an order dated 02.09.2020, doing away with the placement agencies and rightly so, the proceedings of engaging placement agencies, cannot be countenanced. The same are liable to be declared illegal.

16. Petitioners are working as Computer Operator (Man with Machine) on purely contract basis with the respondent society, namely RMRS. Introduction of placement agency would result in change in petitioners’ employer.

17. All the writ petitions are hereby allowed.

18. The advertisements/E-tenders issued by the respondents for engaging the petitioners through placement agencies impugned herein are hereby quashed.

19. The State-respondents are hereby directed to continue the petitioners engagement/ contract with Rajasthan Medicare Relief Society, in accordance with law.

20. Needless to observe that in case regularly selected candidates are available, the State shall be free to proceed in accordance with law, including disbanding petitioners’ contract or disengaging them.

21. Interlocutory applications also stands disposed of.”

4. There is an apprehension of the petitioners having been replaced by another set of contractual employees. On these points the take of Additional Advocate General’s Office is that they are not changing the nature of the petitioners’ services as they shall continue them on contractual services until they are replaced by a regularly selected persons or their services are no longer required on count of schemes having come to an end and they shall not replace the petitioners with another set of contractual employees but they shall be free to replace them after they have regularly appointed persons or if the scheme itself comes to an end.

5. As far the RMRS is concerned, learned counsel for the respondent has vehemently opposed that RMRS is not an intermediary agency, thus, ought to be freed from burden of carrying out the recruitment and assigning the persons for