HARIDAS S/O VELAYUDHAN Vs. STATE OF KERALA REPRESENTED BY ITS SECRETARY DEPARTMENT OF WATER RESOURCES

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The appellants herein are the petitioners in W.P.(C) No.21499 of 2011. They filed the writ petition primarily seeking regularisation of their services under the third respondent on the assertion that they are engaged as unskilled manual labourers in the various gardens attached to the Malampuzha Dam in Palakkad District.

(2.) The appellants say that they have put in more than 15 years of service as unskilled workers and that the work, in which they are engaged, is of a recurring nature and which require their services continuously without any break. The appellants submit that the unskilled workers in Malampuzha garden were being regularised as HR, SLR and CLR workers periodically by the Government by issuing appropriate orders from time to time in the past.

(3.) According to them, since they were not regularised in such fashion, they approached this court by filing W.P.(C) No.19613 of 2006, which was disposed of by a judgment of this court, directing them to make appropriate representation to the District Collector. The appellants say that instead of taking an apposite decision as directed by this court, the District Collector forwarded their representation to the Chief Engineer. The Chief Engineer is thereafter stated to have called for a list from the Curator of the Malampuzha Gardens relating to the employees working as HR labourers and the appellants say that they were also included in such list, a copy of which has been placed as Ext.P7. The appellants submit that in spite of all these, since they were not regularised in service, they approached this court again in W.P.(C) No.2215 of 2009 which culminated in Ext.P8 judgment, wherein directions were given to the Government to decide upon their claims for regularisation. They say that this led the Government to issue Ext.P9 order, wherein the claims of the appellants and others similarly placed, were rejected on the ground that the earlier Government Order, dated 20.1.1990, on which reliance was placed by the appellants, would not apply to them since there was a cut off date fixed therein which stipulated that only those employees who were in service as on 19.5.1983 would be entitled to absorption. They say that this amounts to a discrimination among persons who are working in the Malampuzha gardens, merely on the fortuitous reason that some of them were not in service as on 19.5.1983 and that the denial of such benefits to the persons who came into service subsequently would amount to violation of the principles of natural justice.