S V MUNIAPPA Vs. KARNATAKA SLUM CLEARANCE BOARD

JUDGEMENT

(1.) HEARD counsel on both sides. These two petitions have been pending from the year 1988. The two petitioners who claim to have been employees of the respondent- Board allege that on March 30 1988, they had addressed a notice through their advocate pointing out that injustice was done to them insofar as even though they had been employed from about the year 1985-86 that they had been on daily wages, they were not being paid salary on holidays and that they had no security of tenure. It is their case that the notice was only a demand for justice which they had every right to address. They have produced the acknowledgment that the legal notice reached the Respondent-Board on April 2, 1988. According to them, the Board hit back by immediately refusing to allow them to work. They were not given any order of termination but they were not assigned any work from that date onwards. On June 6, 1988 the petitioners addressed one more notice through their lawyers calling upon the Board to assign work to the petitioners. I do not find on record any reply to these two notices. Thereafter on June 24, 1988 the present petitions were filed.

(2.) THE respondent-Board has contended that the petitioners were temporary employees. That it was an ad-hoc appointment. That they had been appointed only for a limited period of time in order to complete some assignment and that consequently they had no right to demand either regularisation or any of the benefits that accrued to permanent employees. THE Board submitted in connection with various assignments that it is required to undertake that it is quite normal and natural for them to require for a short period of time some additional hands whom they employ purely on an ad-hoc basis. It is further submitted that in such situations the employees concerned cannot claim the rights and benefits of duly recruited permanent employees. It is further submitted that the petitioners were discontinued on March 30, 1988 which is before the receipt of their notice and that it is false to allege that they were discontinued only because they had addressed the notice in question.

(3.) THE respondents have basically relied on the position in law and their learned counsel has vehemently submitted that the flaw in the arguments advanced on behalf of the petitioners is that these persons had not entered employment through the regular channel prescribed for employment of permanent employees. He states that it has been the case of the Board that these appointments were temporary and ad-hoc appointments and that consequently the rights and privileges that are now claimed are not available to the petitioners. In support of this proposition, learned counsel has relied on two decisions repotted in (1993-I-LLJ-190) the case of (Director, Institute of Management Development, U.P. v. Pushpa Srivastava) and the second decision reported in (1993-II-LLJ-937) in the case of (State of Haryana and Ors. v. Piara Singh). It is true that the Supreme Court has very clearly restated the law in the first of these two decisions wherein it is pointed out that persons who are purely temporary or whose employment is for an ad-hoc period of time cannot be put on par with regular or permanent employees nor can they claim as a matter of right regutarisation and consequential benefits. In the second of these decisions, the Supreme Court has reported guiding principles that Courts should follow before passing orders directing regulation in cases where it may not really be warranted and particularly where a large number of employees are involved because of the damaging effect that such orders involve. THEre is no quarrel with regard to the correctness of the proposition of the decisions laid down by the Supreme Court which do apply to all such cases.