Authorities must consider regularization from completion of two years’ service under the policy applied.

The petitioners, daily-rated Junior Engineers in the Power Development Department, were engaged as contractual Junior Engineers with the JKSPDC from 25.04.2013.

In an earlier writ petition, the High Court directed the respondents to consider their regularization under the applicable policy; the respondents subsequently regularized them with effect from 31.08.2016, stating that they had completed two years of satisfactory, uninterrupted service.

The petitioners sought regularization from 25.04.2015, the date they claimed to have completed two years’ service, and also raised a claim concerning credit for their earlier daily-rated service.

The respondents argued that the petitioners were not recruited through the selection process applicable to other contractual appointees and that their regularization was a one-time exception under the J&K Civil Services (Special Provision) Act, 2010.

Whether the petitioners’ regularization should be considered with effect from 25.04.2015, on completion of two years’ service, rather than from 31.08.2016.

Whether the respondents could resist that claim by asserting that the petitioners’ regularization was a one-time exception under the 2010 Act, when the regularization order did not state that basis.

The Court directed consideration under the policy pursuant to which the petitioners had been regularized, noting that the regularization order expressly referred to completion of two years’ satisfactory and uninterrupted service and that no other applicable policy had been brought to its notice.

The respondents relied on clause 5(v) of the J&K Civil Services (Special Provision) Act, 2010, which they said required seven years of continuous service for regularization of contractual employees; however, the Court did not treat that provision as determinative of the petitioners’ claim, given the terms of the 2016 order and the respondents’ earlier position.

The Court considered the respondents’ earlier affidavit, which referred to the petitioners’ completion of the requisite period and satisfactory service, alongside the 2016 order regularizing them after two years of satisfactory, uninterrupted service.

It reasoned that the order’s terms indicated application of the two-year contractual-service policy and did not identify regularization as a one-time exception under the 2010 Act.

The respondents therefore could not oppose the claim by advancing a different basis that was not reflected in the order.

The Court did not itself determine that regularization from 25.04.2015 was due; it directed the respondents to consider the claim under the applicable policy.

The judgment does not separately decide the petitioners’ claim for credit for their earlier daily-rated service.