The main legal point established in the judgment is the entitlement to regularization and equal pay for employees who have completed five years of continuous service, as per the Dhrubananda Mishra judgment. The Court also emphasized the need for communication and publication of orders affecting an employee's service status.

JUDGMENT

B.R. Sarangi, J. - Rajib Lochan Mahanta, who was working as a Group-D employee in Utkal University, Khurda, has filed this writ petition seeking direction to the opposite parties to remove the discrimination and regularize him in the Group-D post available in the establishment of opposite party-University and place him in the gradation list meant for Class-IV posts for consequential services and financial benefits as due and admissible to him at par with similarly situated persons, whose services have already been regularized.

2. The factual matrix of the case, in hand, is that in Dhrubananda Mishra and others vs. ViceChancellor, Utkal University,1994 77 CutLT 70, nine petitioners had approached this Court seeking two directions from this Court- the first was relating to regularization of service and the second was to pay them equal to that of their counterparts in regular service. The Division Bench of this Court held that regularization has been accepted as a part and parcel of condition of service and specifically for those, who had completed five years of continuous service. Since all the nine petitioners in the said writ petition had completed more than five years of continuous service, so a case of regularization was made out and the Division Bench of this Court directed the opposite parties to take early steps for regularization of those petitioners, along with other eligible employees, by framing an appropriate scheme and, thereafter, to regularize as per the seniority of the incumbents. It was also directed that apart from the basic pay, those petitioners at all be entitled to dearness and additional dearness allowance only being paid to the regular hands. That entitlement would be given effect from the date of passing of the judgment, i.e., 13.01.1993. It is apparent that on regularization, the incumbents would get the pay and other allowances as are available to regularly employed employees.

2.1. The aforesaid judgment was challenged before the apex Court in SLP (C) No. 9240 of 1993 and the same was dismissed on 13.02.1996. Consequentially, the order passed by the Division Bench was confirmed. After confirmation of the judgment of this Court, the opposite party University on 23.05.1996 prepared a seniority list of daily wages working in its establishment, wherein the petitioner's name found place at serial no. 171 and one Niranjan Patra at serial no. 170. The opposite partyUniversity also prepared the list indicating deduction of EPF from the wages of non-regular employees according to the seniority, wherein, the petitioner's name found place at serial no. 83, Niranjan Patra was placed at serial no. 82, Sarbeswar Gochhayat at seial no. 85, Mohan Kumar Muduli at serial no. 86. In terms of the judgment passed by the Division Bench of this Court in Dhrubananda Mishra (supra), the University regularized the employees in two spells, in 1st spell 87 and in 2nd spell 77 totaling to 164 employees, who were in the seniority list under Annexre-2, were regularized. In the 2nd spell, Niranjan Patra, who was at serial no. 170, just above the petitioner, was regularized on 06.02.2014. As per information received under the Right to Information Act, 2005, all total 174 posts were available in Class-IV cadre in the opposite party-University establishment. Thereby, 10 more vacancies were left out, against which the petitioner, who is standing at serial no. 171, could have been regularized, but, for the reasons best known to the authority, his services have not been regularized, though one Niranjan Patra standing just above the petitioner at serial no. 170 was regularized.

2.2 Therefore, the petitioner, along with fourteen others, filed W.P.(C) No. 7391 of 2006 before this Court. The Division Bench of this Court, vide order dated 26.02.2009, disposed of the said writ petition directing the State Government to take a decision