The court reinforced the principle that long-serving temporary employees are entitled to regularization under specific legal frameworks, and non-compliance with court orders can lead to contempt proceedings.

ORDER :

1. Heard Sri Prabhakar Chikkudu, learned counsel appearing on behalf of the Petitioners and learned Government Pleader for Services-II appearing on behalf of respondents.

2. The petitioners approached the Court seeking prayer as under:

“...to punish the respondents herein for the respondents willful violation and deliberate disobedience of the orders, dated 09.12.2022 in W.P. No. 5819 of 2018 by here Lordships Hon’ble Justice Smt.Surepalli Nanda and pass such other order or orders…”

3. PERUSED THE RECORD:

A. The operative portion of the order dated 09.12.2022 passed in W.P. No. 5819 of 2018 reads as under:

28. The respondents herein cannot deny the relief of regularization to the petitioners as per para 53 of the decision in Umadevi’s case, which permits one time exercise of regularization to be done for personal employed on temporary basis/daily wages etc, who have rendered continuous service for more than 10 years. The respondents herein cannot take the services of the petitioners for years together without regularising their services and indulge in such a practice inconsistent with their obligation to function in accordance with the constitution as observed by the Apex Court in Nihal Singh and others vs. State of Punjab which clearly held that “sanctioned posts do not fall from heaven” and the State has to create them by a conscious choice on the basis of some rational assessment of the need.

29. Taking into consideration the above referred facts and circumstances and in view of the observations of the Apex Court in various judgments referred to and discussed above, the writ petition is allowed duly setting aside the order impugned in Procgs No. 37/CPR&RE/C2/2015, dated 27.10.2016 and the respondents while continuously engaging the services of the petitioners herein are henceforth directed to consider the case of the petitioners for regularization of their services in accordance to law, in the posts whose work they are discharging now in the light of the various judgments of the Apex Court referred to and discussed above and pass appropriate orders, within a period of two months from the date of receipt of copy of this order duly communicating the decision to the petitioner. However, there shall be no order as to costs.

B. Counter affidavit filed on behalf of respondent No. 3, and in particular, para No. 11, reads as under:

11. Therefore, as per the settled preposition of law, the regularization can be made only as per the regularization policy declared by the State /Government and nobody can claim the regularization as a matter of right dehors the regularization policy. Therefore, in absence of any sanctioned post and considering the fact that the respondents were engaged on piece meal basis only they were not entitled for the benefit of regularization and accordingly speaking orders have been issued.

In view of the above, it is very humbly submitted that this answering respondent is a responsible Government Employees having highest respect for the orders passed by any Court including the Hon’ble High Court and never violated any orders passed by this Hon’ble High Court.

I humbly submit that, if , this Hon’ble Court still feels that orders of the Hon’ble Court were violated by these respondents 1 to 4, I tender an unconditional apology for the same.

Therefore, it is prayed that this Hon’ble Court may be pleased to dismiss the above contempt case against the respondent’s and pass such other order or orders as this Hon’ble Court may deem fit and proper in the circumstances of the case and render justice.

C. Paragraph No. 6 of the reply affidavit filed on behalf of the petitioners in C.C.No. 805 of 2023 in W.P. No. 5819 of 2018, read as under:

8. I submit that the respondents taken stand in the Para No. 9 of the present counter affidavit, has already been rejected by Hon’ble Court in the facts of the case and Hon’ble Supreme Court judgments as stated above i.e., Nihal Singh Judgment and M.L.Kesari Judgments were considered and the