O R D E R

Petitioners have filed the petition under Article 226 of the Constitution of India, seeking following substantive relief: -

“i). That in view of the mentioned facts and circumstances, the present writ petition may kindly be allowed and respondent department may kindly be directed to regularize the services of the petitioners w.e.f. 5.1.2018 instead of 17.8.2020 along with all consequential benefits in view of law laid down by this Court in CWP No.342 of 2021, titled as Yashwant Singh vs. State of H.P. along with connected matters, in the interest of justice and fair play.”

2. Learned counsel for the petitioners has submitted that the petitioners were initially appointed on PTA basis in the year 2006. Thereafter, vide policy decision dated 16th August, 2013, the State of Himachal Pradesh has decided to bring the services of the petitioners on contract basis w.e.f. January, 2015. The petitioners were entitled for regularization of their services on completion of three years contractual service as per regularization policy.

3. Learned counsel for the petitioners has submitted that the case of the petitioners is duly covered by the decision given by this Court in CWP No.342 of 2021, titled as Yashwant Singh and others vs. State of Himachal Pradesh and others alongwith connected matters, decided on 31.8.2022.

4. Learned Additional Advocate General has not controverted the submissions made by learned counsel for the petitioners.

5. Operative part of the decision dated 31.8.2022 passed in CWP No.342 of 2021, reads as under:-

“19. With due deference to the judgments relied upon by the respondents, we are of the considered view that the ratio laid down therein will not serve the cause of respondents for the reason firstly that, as held above, it was not a case of fixation of cut-off date for the entire class, secondly that the above referred judgments were passed in their own facts and lastly the only caveat generated is that the court should not normally interfere with the fixation of cut-off date by the executive authority unless such order appears to be on the face of it blatantly discriminatory and arbitrary or the said cut-off date leads to some blatantly capricious or outrageous result or it is shown to be totally capricious or whimsical. We have no hesitation to hold that in the facts of instant case the impugned action of respondents is blatantly discriminatory and arbitrary. In R L. Marwaha v. Union of India (1987) 4 SCC 31, it has been held that fixing of a date for grant of benefit, must have nexus with the object sought to be achieved. The respondents, as noticed above, at one stage had themselves supported the cause of petitioners for granting them permanency of job on the premise of financial compulsions faced by it. They preferred contract employments or employments under special policies at initial stage than the recruitments on regular basis for the same reason of financial constraints. Once the courts upheld the contentions of respondents, they cannot be allowed to defeat the rights of petitioners by creating fictional separate class of employees. Noticeably, the respondents have not declared any object for creating such imaginary classification and hence it is difficult nay impossible to find necessary nexus between the intelligible differentia and the object sought to be achieved.

20. It is also not a case where the respondents have not come out with reasons in support of its actions and financial constraint is not one of the mentioned reasons. Other reasons have already been held by us to be not qualifying the benchmark of reasonable classification and hence have been adjudged to be discriminatory and arbitrary.

21. Lastly another futile attempt has been made on behalf of respondents by contending that some of the PTA-GIA teachers were taken on contract and some were left out, therefore, they being homogeneous class cannot be differentiated. According to respondents the grant of claimed benefit of regularisation