The main legal point established in the judgment is that the members of the petitioner-Union, being engaged by contractors, were not entitled to residential accommodation from the respondents as per the Allotment Rules and the provisions of the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970.

Sandeep Sharma, J.

By way of present writ petition, petitioner-Union has prayed for the following main relief:-

“(i) That the respondents may kindly be directed to allot residential quarters/ accommodation to the petitioner's members to live on the principle of parity as the respondents have allotted accommodation to various other agencies and persons such as; Pujari, Contractors, Photographers, private Companies, Army, Security, Societies, private School (DPS) and ITI certificate holder apprentices etc., but the petitioner's members who are working since long for various types of maintenance works of the respondents despite their various requests are being discriminated.”

2. Briefly stated, facts of the case are that the petitioner is a Union registered with the Himachal Pradesh Government Labour Department, under the Trade Unions Act, 1926, (for short, the Act), having its Registration No. 1255, in the name and style “Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam Contract Workers Union” (for short 'Union'). Copy of registration certificate has been placed on record as Annexure P-1.

3. Present petition has been filed on behalf of the petitioner-Union through Narender Singh, son of Shri Shiv Ram, who claimed himself to be the General Secretary of the Petitioner-Union. It is averred that respondents have sufficient number of buildings, out of which some have been put to use for the offices and in some of the buildings, accommodation has been allotted to various agencies/persons, such as, Pujari, Contractors, Photographers, private Companies, Army, Security, Societies, private School (DPS) etc., and since the members of the petitioner-Union are also working for the respondents, they may also be provided residential accommodation in the buildings which are lying vacant. Petitioner-Union specifically stated that its members belong to different parts of the country, have been working in various capacities with the respondents and at present are facing number of problems including non-availability of residences. Accordingly, the petitioner-Union submitted a Demand Charter dated 12.02.2015 to the respondents (Annexure P-2), whereby, respondents were informed with regard to genuine demand of the members of the Union, but of no avail. Petitioner has procured information under Right to Information Act, 2005 (for short 'RTI Act'), (Annexure P-3), suggestive of the fact that respondents were having sufficient vacant accommodation available. Perusal of aforesaid information further reveals that respondents have allotted residential/commercial accommodation to various persons/agencies, which have no direct concern with the respondents. Petitioner-Union has also placed on record Quarter Allotment Order, dated 1.4.2016, to demonstrate that respondents have also provided accommodation to number of ITI Certificate holders who came only for a period of one year.

4. In nutshell, the case of the petitioner-Union is that since its members are working hard on meager wages for the benefit of respondents through the contractors, it is the primary duty of the respondents to provide accommodation to the poor members of the petitioner-Union. It has also been stated that due to non-availability of shelter, the members of the petitioner-Union are facing a lot of problems and respondents, despite having sufficient vacant accommodation, are not providing the same to them.

5. As noted above, since no action whatsoever was taken on the Demand Charter submitted by petitioner-Union, it was compelled to pass a Resolution dated 02.04.2016, to the following effect:

“Unanimously resolved that about 200 residential quarters are lying vacant with the respondents, but despite having knowledge that the petitioner's members are facing problems for their shelter, the same are not being allotted to petitioner's members, hence, the petitioner's members knocked the door of Hon'ble High Court of Himachal Pradesh.”

6. Since, the respondents failed to provide residential accommodation to the membe