A continuity-of-service award deems an employee continuously employed for regularization eligibility.

Noor Hassan was engaged as a part-time Tube Well Operator on 5 May 1982 and his services were terminated on 8 August 1985.

In 2009, he raised an industrial dispute; the Labour Court’s award dated 13 June 2011 directed reinstatement with continuity of service but denied back wages.

He was reinstated on 21 June 2013.

In his 2018 writ petition, he challenged an office memorandum dated 26 May 2018 and sought regularization, claiming entitlement under the Uttar Pradesh Regularization Rules of 1996.

The Single Judge instead directed his regularization under Uttarakhand’s 2011 Rules and ordered payment of service benefits, excluding back wages.

Noor Hassan appealed the application of the 2011 Rules; the State separately appealed the regularization direction.

1. Whether Noor Hassan could claim regularization under the Uttar Pradesh Rules of 1996, notwithstanding his absence from employment when those Rules were in force and their subsequent supersession by Uttarakhand’s 2011 Rules.

2. Whether the Labour Court’s award of reinstatement with continuity of service required Noor Hassan to be treated as continuously serving for purposes of eligibility under the 2011 Rules, despite his actual absence from employment after 1985.

The Uttarakhand Regularization Rules of 2011 superseded the existing rules and orders on regularization and governed the petitioner’s claim following his reinstatement.

Under Rule 4(1) of the 2011 Rules, the relevant eligibility requirement included ten years’ service before the prescribed cut-off date.

The 1996 Rules did not confer automatic regularization: selection by a committee and a recommendation were required, and Rule 6(1) provided that seniority ran only from the date of appointment after selection under those Rules.

Further, an award granting reinstatement with continuity of service entitled the petitioner to be treated as having continued in service for that purpose.

The Court rejected Noor Hassan’s claim under the 1996 Rules because he was out of employment in 1996 and sought regularization only after his reinstatement; by then Uttarakhand’s 2011 Rules had superseded the earlier regime.

The Court also observed that regularization under the 1996 Rules would not have been automatic or retrospective: it depended on selection, and the petitioner had claimed regularization only in 2013.

As to the State’s appeal, the Labour Court had expressly awarded continuity of service. The Court therefore upheld the conclusion that, by legal fiction, Noor Hassan was to be treated as continuously serving as a part-time Tube Well Operator, enabling his claim to be considered under the 2011 Rules.

The Court upheld the direction to regularize Noor Hassan under the 2011 Rules and to provide the service benefits due to him, excluding back wages as directed by the Labour Court.

The Court requested that the regularization order, effective from the due date in terms of the Single Judge’s judgment, be issued within four weeks if it had not already been issued.