The main legal point established in the judgment is that continuous service as a daily wage laborer, completing the required days of work, entitles an individual to regularization as per the applicable policy framed by the State Government, and unjustified distinctions between hourly and daily basis engagement are not valid.

ORDER :

By way of instant petition, petitioner has prayed for the following substantive reliefs: -

“a) That termination order/letter Annexure A3 may kindly be quashed and set aside and respondents may kindly be directed to reinstate the services of the applicant with all consequential benefits such as seniority, arrears etc. and the original application may kindly be allowed.

b) That the respondents may kindly be directed to regularize the services of the applicant after completion of 6 or 8 years as per policy of the state after condoning the fictional breaks period or if no policy is there, then to direct the respondents to formulate a policy being a model state; so the Constitutional mandates provided for the welfare state be fulfilled and justice be done.

c) That the respondents may kindly be directed not to give fictional breaks to the applicant and allow him to do work throughout the year and the consequential benefits of the regularization of fictional breaks may also be given to applicant as per law”

2. The petitioner had originally filed O.A. No. 2675 of 2016 before the learned H.P. State Administrative Tribunal in the year 2016 and after the abolition of the Tribunal, the Original Application of the petitioner was transferred to this Court and the same was registered as CWPOA No. 7632 of 2019. By virtue of an interim direction issued by H.P. State Administrative Tribunal, petitioner continued in the job.

3. The case of petitioner is that he was engaged as daily wagelabourer/Contract Beldar in the year 2007 in Community Fruit Processing-cum-Training Centre, (Nagaan), District Hamirpur, H.P (for short, ‘the Centre’). He had rendered continuous service with 240 days in each calendar year from the date of his engagement till the date of filing of the petition. The respondents had regular work in the Centre and petitioner had been assigned multiple jobs from time to time viz preparation of pickles, jams, jelly etc, to impart training to local residents, to clean and maintain the premises, attend counter sales, gardening work and duty as watchman. The working hours have been from 9.00 a.m. to 5.00 p.m.

4. Petitioner has sought relief of regularization as per the regularization policy of the Government of Himachal Pradesh. The grievance of the petitioner has not been redressed till date.

5. Respondents have contested the claim of the petitioner on the ground that he was engaged on hourly basis in the year 2007 and he had been paid for the work performed by him on hourly basis. Petitioner was not entitled to regularization, as his engagement was not on Muster Roll basis. The regularization policy would not be applicable in the case of petitioner, who was engaged on hourly basis.

6. I have heard Mr. Arun Kumar, learned counsel for the petitioner and Mr. Desh Raj Thakur, learned Additional Advocate General for the respondents and have also gone through the record carefully.

7. On 24.8.2022, the respondents were directed to produce records pertaining to the service of petitioner. In compliance to said order, the record was produced on 14.9.2022 and on its perusal, it has been found that the petitioner has completed 240 days in each calendar year since 1.1.2008 till 2021 and even in this current year also, he has completed 242 days till 31.8.2022. The only contention of respondents is that the petitioner was engaged on hourly basis and not on daily basis. This distinction is clearly superfluous. Respondents with their reply have annexed the documents, reflecting working hours of the petitioner. As per these documents, petitioner has been rendering service for seven hours every day and his employment was continuous. In these circumstances, the conversion of hours into days can clearly be said to be unjustified or illegal.

8. This Court in CWPOA No. 6748 of 2019, titled as, Vikram Singh vs. State of H.P. & others, while dealing with identical issue has held as under:-

“10. In CWPOA No. 1833, the respondents had raised same objections as rais