The central legal point established in the judgment is that the department was obligated to consider the cases of daily waged workmen for conferring work-charged status upon completion of the required years in accordance with the policy.

Kurian Joseph,J.

These Writ Petitions have been filed with an identical set of prayers. One such prayer is extracted below, which reads thus:

“i) That the writ in the nature of mandamus may kindly be issued to the respondents to grant work charge status to the petitioner as per the law laid down by this Hon’ble Court in CWP 2735/10 titled as Rakesh kumar V/S State of H.P. and others with all the consequential benefits thereof such as arrears of salary, pay fixation etc.”

2. It is submitted that an identical issue was considered by this Court leading to judgment in CWP No. 2735 of 2010, titled as Rakesh Kumar vs. State of H.P. & ors. The text of the judgment reads as follows:

“The petitioners herein are workers who have been regularized in service under the Irrigation and Public Health Department. All of them have been regularized in service as per the various schemes announced by the State from time to time. Their only grievance is that before regularization, they should have been granted the work-charged status.

2. The only reference to be made for analyzing the grievance of the petitioners is two orders of the Government. One order is dated 3.4.2000 and other is dated 6.5.2000. Order dated 3.4.2000, reads as follows:

“In partial modification of this Department letter of even number dated 8th July, 1999 on the above subject, I am directed to say that the Government has now decided that the Daily Waged/Contingent Paid workers in all the Departments including Public Works and Irrigation and Public Health Departments (other than work-charged categories)/Boards/Corporations/Universities, etc. who have completed 8 years of continuous service (with a minimum of 240 days in a calendar year) as on 31-03-2000 will be eligible for regularization. It has further been decided that completion of required years of service makes such daily wager/contingent paid worker eligible for consideration to be regularized and regularization in all cases will be from prospective effect i.e. from the date the order of regularization is issued after completion of codal formalities.

2. In view of the above decision and in order to avoid any litigation and also any hardship to daily wagers departments shall do the regularization based on seniority and they will ensure that senior persons are regularized first rather than regularizing junior persons first.

3. Other terms and conditions like fulfillment of essential qualification as prescribed in R&P Rules, etc. etc. as laid down in this department letter of 8th July, 1999, as referred to above, shall continue to be operative.

4. These instructions may kindly be brought to the notice of all concerned for strict compliance.

5. These instructions have been issued with the prior approval of the Finance Department obtained vide their Dy. No. 852 dated 23-03-2000.”

3. Order dated 6.5.2000, to the extent relevant, reads as follows:

“2. During the process of regularization of daily wagers, various issues and problems relating to these workers concerning their regularization have been brought to the notice of the Government. The Government in order to avoid such confusion or problems has decided to streamline the existing procedure/instructions in order to bring uniformity of procedure in various Departments of the Government. It has, therefore, been decided that henceforth:

(i) Daily Waged/Contingent Paid Workers who have completed required years of continuous service (with a minimum of 240 days in a calendar year except where specified other wise for the tribal areas) which as per latest instructions issued vide this Department letter of even number dated 3-4-2000 is 8 years as on 31-03-2000 shall be eligible for regularization. However, in Departments/Corporations/Boards, where the system of the work charge categories also exists, eligible daily wagers will be considered first for bringing them on the work charge category instead of regularization. Such eligible daily waged workers/contingent paid