Point of Law: While interpreting provisions of Employment Exchanges (Compulsory Notification of Vacancies) Act, 1959 held that there is no provision in Act which obliges an employer to employ those persons only, who have been sponsored by employment exchanges.

JUDGMENT :

Tarlok Singh Chauhan, J.

Since, common questions of law and facts are involved in these writ petitions, therefore, they are taken up together for disposal. For convenience, facts of CWP No. 786 of 2017 are being considered hereinafter.

2. The State Government created 58 posts of Class-IV in the Department of Social Justice & Empowerment for the newly sanctioned ICDS Projects. Hence, keeping in view the longer experience of part time workers working in the departments, the departments with the approval of State Government decided to fill up these posts from amongst the part time workers by adopting following one time criteria on 23.11.1996 i.e. as under :-

“(i) The part time workers who have completed 5 years, sponsored by the Employment Exchange and were within the admissible age limit at the time of appointment and have at least passed 7th class should be regularized at the first instance;

(ii) Out of the remaining part time workers who do not fall under the above categories are required to be regularized in a phased manner according to their seniority amongst part time workers who have at least put in 5 years of service and have at least passed 7th class;

(iii) Those part time workers whose date of birth is available irrespective of their educational qualification may also regularized according to seniority in a phased manner as they have rendered many years of service in the department; and

(iv) In the case of daily wages the minimum service is also five years and educational qualification has been relaxed upto 5th standard.”

3. On the basis of aforesaid criteria, 58 persons came to be regularized and other respondents could not be regularized, as their names were falling either in Category-III against which 17 persons were regularized due to limited vacancies and the last regularized part time worker in this category was the appointee of the year 1986, whereas some of the respondents were the appointees of the year of 1987. However, later on many of the respondents were conferred with daily-wage status in the year 2004.

4. Subsequently, the State Government notified Policy for Regularization in the year 2012, according to which, the respondents were due for regularization from 1.4.2012 but due to limited vacancies in the department and in their place many workers could not be regularized.

5. Accordingly, the department took up the matter with the State Government for creation of supernumerary posts, which were not acceded to and now a decision has been taken to regularize eligible daily-wagers in their department where vacancies of Class-IV employees were available. In this list, there were 41 daily-wagers, who were below 8th pass, while 29 daily-wagers was 8th pass or above, as such their services were not regularized. 41 persons were below 8th pass and therefore, cannot be considered for regularization.

6. As a matter of fact, it was the respondent-department itself, which requested the Health and Family Welfare Department to regularize the services of the daily-wagers irrespective of their educational qualification on the basis of the judgment rendered by the Hon’ble Supreme Court in Bhagwati Prasad Vs. Delhi State Mineral Development Corporation, 1990 (1) SCC 361.

7. Further, the department also sent a list of 30 part time workers, who were below 8th pass to the department of Information of Public Relation and to the Department of Language, Art and Culture against the available vacancies of Class-IV. However, in the meantime, vacancies of Class-IV arose in the department itself and the services of the respondents have now been regularized, vide order dated 30.7.2014. The employees including the respondents herein, approached the erstwhile HP State Tribunal for regularization of their services in the year 1996, when services of their juniors had been regularized.

8. As observed above, the claims of these employees for their regularization were being contested only on the ground that either they did not possess the requis