The main legal point established in the judgment is the requirement for fair and reasonable treatment of employees in the regularisation process, as well as the need to consider seniority and provide employees with an opportunity to be heard before cancelling their regularisation orders.

( 1 ) AS common questions are involved in all these cases and facts are also identical, they are being disposed of by this common order.

( 2 ) PETITIONERS in all these petitions are working in the water resources department. Initially, they were appointed on daily wage basis in the post of copyist, typist, referencer and have been continuously working from various dates prior to december 31, 1988.

( 3 ) IT is the case of the petitioners that some of them are working since 1982 and 1983, were agitating their claim for being regularised in service before various fora. Some of the employees had filed applications before the labour court claiming their classification as permanent employees and certain other employees had taken action for filing applications before the state administrative tribunal claiming regularisation in service. When such proceedings were pending in the case of some of the employees, state government issued circulars on december 31, 1999 and clarified the same by another circular dated february 14, 2000 wherein certain procedure was laid down for discontinuing services of the daily wage employees. It was also emphasised in these circulars that before terminating the services of daily wage employees, scrutiny of each and every case shall be made and after scrutinizing only, action shall be taken for terminating the services of daily wage employees.

( 4 ) IN the meanwhile, keeping in view certain other directives and circulars issued by the state government in the water resources department, a screening committee consisting of 10 senior officials including the chief engineer, rajghat canal project, datia, chief engineer, bodhi project, bhopal and other executive engineers were constituted and the committee was entrusted with the task of screening the cases of eligible daily wage employees to be considered for regularisation in the services of the department. Accordingly, a letter dated september 3, 2001, anneuxre p-2 filed in w. p. no. 1781/2003 was circulated, indicating the service particulars of about 42 employees which included the present petitioners. Objections were called for from various quarters with regard to seniority of the employees and after conducting the process of screening and selection, orders were issued on june 3, 2003 vide annexure p-7 filed in w. p. no. 1781/2003 and similar, orders passed in other cases regularising the present petitioners in service. After these orders were passed, petitioners were posted, at various places and they proceeded to join and according to the petitioners, some of them had joined on june 5, 2003 and on various other dates when on june 11, 2003 on the basis of telephonic instructions received from the engineer-in-chief, it was decided to cancel the orders of regularisation issued in favour of the petitioners and vide annexure p-1 dated june 10, 2003, the order of regularisation dated june 3, 2003, have been cancelled.

( 5 ) IN all the cases, it is the contention of the petitioners that cancellation of the orders of regularisation without hearing them, without giving them opportunity of making. Representation is unsustainable. That apart, during the course of hearing, shri r. d. jain, learned senior counsel and shri m. p. s. raghuvanshi, learned counsel for the petitioners pointed out that the only reason why the order impugned has been passed is due to 30% reduction in the strength of the department and in that view of the matter about 300 employees working as assistant ograde-iii are in excess, therefore, regularisation is being cancelled. It was submitted by learned counsel appearing for the petitioners, referring to various documents and in particular to a letter 5 annexure p-14 filed in w. p. no. 1781/2003 and as annexure p/z in w. p. no. 1810/2003 dated april 26, 2003 to indicate that the competent authority of the department has intimated about availability of vacancy in the establishment where the petitioners have been regularised. It