All these Writ Petitions in­volve common questions of law and facts and, therefore, as agreed by learned counsels for the parties, have been heard together and are being decided by this common judgment at this stage under the Rules of the Court.

2. The Writ Petition No. 37610 of 2008 (hereinafter referred to as the "first Writ Pe­tition") argued as leading case has been filed by 45 petitioners seeking a writ of manda­mus commanding the respondents to regularize them on the post of Assistant from the date of their initial appointment with all service benefits; and a further mandamus not to make any appointment on the post held by the petitioners in various branches of the Corporation pursuant to advertisement (An-nexure-3 to the Writ Petition).

3. The facts in brief, giving rise to the present dispute, as averred in the first Writ Petition, are, that due to shortage of Assis­tants on account of non recruitment for years together, the Branch Managers of various branches of Life Insurance Corporation of India (hereinafter referred to as the "LIC") requested the Divisional and Zonal Manag­ers to permit them to make appointments on the post of Assistants. After receiving ap­proval there from, requisitions were sent to various employment exchanges. The petition­ers names were forwarded by the concerned employment exchanges. Thereafter they were interviewed and being successful therein were issued appointment letters. Copies of some of the appointment letters have been filed col­lectively as Annexures-7 & 8 to the Writ Petition. The petitioners joined their services as Assistants (except petitioner No. 16 who joined as Typist) on various dates in the years 1998-99. It would be appropriate to place the said details as under: (See table on next page)

4. The work and performance of the peti­tioners claim to be satisfactory. Some of the petitioners were also transferred from one section to another for discharging duties of Assistant and Cashier. However, the petition­ers were not given benefits like annual incre­ment, medical benefit, leave encasement, productivity linked Bonus, lump sum incen­tive, conveyance allowance, provident fund, LTC etc. for which they raised demand through letters dated 02.11.2007, 04.11.2007 and 04.06.2008 (Annexures-12, 13 and 14 to the Writ Petition). It is said that there are permanent vacancies of Assistants and no regular recruitment has been made for the last almost 10 years, therefore, the petitioners are entitled for regularization and all the benefits available to regularly appointed employees. However, instead of considering petitioners for regularization, the respondents have pro­ceeded ahead to issue an advertisement noti­fying substantive vacancies of Assistants in-

@ Table -------------------

ST. No. Petitioner No. Name Date of Joining Post Branch where posted

1. Suresh Kumar Chaturvedi 09.11.1998 Assistant Renukut

2. Parmanand Singh 03.12.1998 Assistant Renukut

3. Abhay Kumar 30.03.1999 Assistant Ballia

4. Rakesh Kumar Srivastava 14.06.1999 Assistant CBO-2 Varanasi

5. Shiv Pratap Singh 10.04.1999 Assistant Vindhyachal

6. Brijesh Kumar Srivastava 01.01.1999 Assistant Robertsganj

7. Virendra Kumar 26.11.1998 Assistant Renukut

8. Surendra Kumar Singh 03.12.1999 Assistant Renukut

9. Brij Bihari Prasad 13.11.1998 Assistant Renukut

10. Sanjay Kumar 19.11.1998 Assistant CBO-4 Varanasi

11. Ashok Kumar Gupta 18.11.1998 Assistant Ballia

12. Santosh Kumar Singh 03.03.1999 Assistant Vindhyachal

13. Prem Kumar Bharti 20.11.1998 Assistant Mirzapur

14. Sanjay Kumar 19.03.1999 Assistant Robertsganj

15. Ajay Kumar 09.11.1998 Assistant Ballia

16. Tribhuvan 28.10.1998 Typist Jaunpur-2

17. Sanjay Kumar Gupta 28.10.1998 Assistant Jaunpur-2

18. Surya Bali Ram 28.10.1998 Assistant CAB Varanasi

19. Santosh Kumar Sinha 18.11.1998 Assistant CBO Varanasi

20. Chandrika Ram 20.11.1998 Assistant CBO-1 Varanasi

21. Abdul Han

Click Here to Read the rest of this document