MAST RAM Vs. STATE OF H.P.

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE petitioners in all these cases, who are daily waged workmen, have rendered service on various dates and according to them, in view of the decision of the Apex Court in Mool Raj Upadhaya Versus State of Himachal Pradesh, AIR 1994 Supp (2) SCC 316, they are entitled to conferment of work charge status. No doubt, all those, who have completed 10 years of service, as on 1.12.1993, are entitled to conferment of work charge status, as on 1.1.1994. However, regularization would depend on the availability of vacancy. One way to find out the availability of vacancy is to see when the juniors have been granted regularization. In the meanwhile, the State has taken steps for amendment of Rule 56 of the Fundamental Rules , w.e.f 10.5.2001 and all those, who have been appointed in regular service prior to 10.5.2001, are entitled to continue up to 60 years. The case of the petitioners is that they should have been regularized in service prior to 10.5.2001, in which case, they could have continued up to the age of 60 years. It has not been disputed that the petitioners have retired from service on completion of 58 years. They have come to this Court after a few years only and not prior to retirement.

(2.) LEARNED Counsel for the petitioners vehemently contended that in the case of several such workmen, who have been granted retrospective regularization, they have been granted the actual consequential benefits. Such people, in case, who were regularized prior to 10.5.2001 retrospectively, have been granted actual monetary benefits for a period of two years, though, they have not actually worked, without any specific orders, appropriate action should be taken. We do not find any legal and for that matter, even moral justification in awarding back wages to persons, who have not worked in the post and who have not been in service, and who had not even raked up the issue, in any case, prior to their termination from service. In case any such workmen have been granted such consequential benefits, there will be a direction to the respondents to immediately take appropriate action in this regard.

(3.) WE make it clear that these directions are in the facts of these cases only and only these cases need be examined by the respondents for the purpose of conferment of benefits, as above.