JUDGMENT :

J.J. MUNIR, J.

1. Heard Mr. R.P. Pandey, learned Counsel for the petitioners, Mr. Girijesh Tripathi, learned Additional Chief Standing Counsel on behalf of respondent No. 1, Mr. Abhishek Srivastava, learned Counsel appearing on behalf of respondent Nos. 2 and 3 and Mr. Adarsh Bhushan, learned Counsel appearing for respondent No. 4.

2. This writ petition has been filed by thirty contract employees, who were linemen with the Purvanchal Vidyut Vitran Nigam Limited (for short ‘the Corporation’) and have had their services dispensed with under orders of approval passed by the Managing Director of the Corporation. The petitioners, though thirty in number, the order terminating the contract of service in terms of an approval by the Managing Director, annexed as Annexure No. 10 to the writ petition, sought to be quashed, relates to the first petitioner alone. Similar orders relating to the other petitioners are not annexed.

3. Nevertheless, there is a case urged on behalf of the petitioners that they have been dealt like the first petitioner, Ashish Kumar Pandey with the Managing Director of the Corporation, approving the termination of their contract, with a further direction that in future, their services will not be hired by the Corporation for any work. The petitioners have, therefore, prayed for a mandamus, directing the respondents to permit the petitioners to continue working for the Corporation and further to pay them their due emoluments.

4. The petitioners, as they say, were employed on the post of Single Sign-On and lineman. The petitioners were recruited as contract workers through a certain M/s. Orient Secare Pvt. Ltd. New Delhi, an outsourcing agency. It is pleaded that subsequently, the said outsourcing agency was appointed a workforce supplier and the petitioners are Secare’s employees working at various centres of the Corporation. The petitioners claim that they have been sincere, honest and dedicated workmen. There is an undertone of resentment of the kind that could have fueled the powermen’s strike, of which reference shall be made a little later, pleaded in Paragraph No. 6 of the writ petition. It is said there that the Corporation were treating the petitioners unfairly, particularly, with regard to their wages. There was a demand by persons retained like the petitioners on contract for the provision of a minimum salary. It is also said that similar workmen in other States, working on contract, have been favoured with their demands about the minimum salary being accepted, but not so in Uttar Pradesh. It is then said in Paragraph No. 6 further on that the petitioners, despite their long standing unmet demand, never refused to discharge their duties or strike work.

5. It is the petitioners’ case that the regular employees of the Corporation, represented by their union, known as the Vidyut Karmachari Sanyukt Sangharsh Samiti, Uttar Pradesh had a meeting between their office bearers and officials of the Corporation, including the Minister of the Department concerned, but despite assurance given by the Authorities, the demands of the petitioners were not fulfilled. Hence, the employees’ union gave a notice of strike to the Chairman of the Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation on 16.02.2023. Again, on 03.03.2023, an identical notice was given by the employees of the union last mentioned to the Chairman of the Corporation.

6. It is then pleaded in Paragraph No. 9 that the petitioners are not members of the union aforesaid, because it is a union of regular employees working throughout Uttar Pradesh under the Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Limited (for short, UPPCL’). It is also asserted that the petitioners are members of another union called the Uttar Pradesh Vidyut Outsourced Mazdoor Sangh, Azamgarh. The said union was registered on 8th December, 2022 with the Registrar of Trade Unions, Uttar Pradesh, Kanpur. The petitioners acknowledge the fact that on 04th January, 2023, the State Government issued a notification in th