NAVAL KISHOR NAGAR Vs. UOI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioners are ex-servicemen and have been working with the respondent No.2, namely, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (hereinafter referred to as `the respondent'). Their prayer in the writ petition is for a direction to restrain the respondent from terminating their services, a direction to regularize the services of the petitioners and also a direction to give the petitioners equal wages and other consequential benefits at par with the regular employees of the respondent. The petitioners allege that they have been working continuously without break for more than 240 days preceding the presentation of the writ petition, that they are fully eligible for posts against which they are working, that the work given to the petitioners are of permanent and perennial nature, that although ostensibly they have been employed through a contractor they are under the control and supervision of the respondent, that the Government of India issued a Notification under section 10 of the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970 on 8.9.1994 prohibiting the employment of contract labourers in the work mentioned in the Schedule therein including telecommunication operators in the respondent Corporation, that the present petitioners are covered by the Notification dated 8.9.1994 and in view of the judgment in Air India Statutory Corp. vs. Labour Union, 1996 (9) SCALE 70 the petitioners are entitled to be absorbed in the service of the respondent and that the petitioners should be given the same benefits of absorption in service as was given to other similarly placed employees who had filed W.P.(C).No.3106/95 in this court in which the direction to absorb them had been given on 28.9.1995.

(2.) The writ petition is vehemently opposed by the respondent in the counter affidavit. It is contended in the first place that the petitioners started working with the respondent with effect from 17.7.1995 and 28.7.1995 as contract labourers deputed by the contractors under the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970 and their contract employment with the respondent expired on 30.9.1995 and thus their employment had come to an end only after two months. It is further pleaded that the respondent engaged the petitioners on ad hoc basis with effect from 1.10.1995 for temporary periods of two months with specific conditions that the petitioners would not be entitled to any regular employment and their service would be liable to be terminated even during the said period of two months without assigning any reason.

(3.) The respondent contends that the petitioners have worked on such ad hoc appointments as were extended from time to time. It is then contended that the petitioners are not entitled to wages equal to the regular employees and that they have no right of being regularized. It is further contended that the petitioners were engaged as maintenance staff and not as operators. The petitioners have filed a rejoinder to reiterate the case made out in the petition.