LEELA BAI Vs. REGIONAL HOUSING DEVELOPMENT CENTRE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE Original Petition filed by the petitioners seek for a direction for continuation in the service of the 1st respondent by absorbing them under the 1st respondent and alternatively to grant terminal benefits in accordance with law. The 1st petitioner is no more and the legal heirs having not been impleaded, it is to be taken that the legal heirs are not interested in pursuing the matter. The issue now is pursued only by the petitioners 2 and 3.

(2.) THE petitioners were taken into the employment under the 1st respondent by Exhibits P3 and P4 and after service for a considerable period, it is alleged that they were sent out unceremoniously on the closure of the 1st respondent on account of the grant-in-aid being stopped in the year 1994.

(3.) HAVING given anxious consideration to the records in the above case, it is not discernible as to what was the exact constitution of the 1st respondent. Exhibit P1 merely states that the staff employed for the running of the 1st respondent would be governed by the rules and regulations applicable to the Government Engineering Colleges. This does not create any right on such employees to claim identity of employment with the employees of the Government Engineering Colleges or even parity of employment. From Exhibit P6 letter it is clear that the 1st respondent was set up as a grant-in-aid institution with recurring maintenance grants from the National Buildings Organisation, the 3rd respondent. It is also stated in Exhibit P6 that the staff so recruited by the Centre shall be governed by the service conditions of the mother institution, i.e., College of Engineering, Thiruvananthapuram. This again, as noticed above, cannot lead to a conclusion that the staff so recruited and employed in the 1st respondent would be the staff of the Engineering Colleges. Exhibit P6 also speaks of a proposal of the Government to convert the Centre as a registered society to function under the Ministry of Urban Development and HUDCO in association with the State Governments. Evidently, such a proposal did not fructify, as, on the suspension of the grant-in-aid, the 1st respondent unit itself was closed down. The petitioners who had been employed under the 1st respondent unit thus has been deprived of employment. It cannot be said that such deprivation was illegal in view of the fact that the 1st respondent unit, which was set up as a grant-in-aid institution, was closed down on such grant-in-aid being discontinued.