Completion of eight years’ daily-wage service does not confer an automatic right to regularization.

The petitioner worked as a daily-wage Chainman in the Forest Settlement Unit, Nahan, from 5 January 2001.

After his services were disengaged in September 2008, an Industrial Tribunal-cum-Labour Court award granted him continuity of service, but no back wages.

The Forest Department subsequently granted him seniority and continuity by order dated 16 August 2014.

After being declared surplus, he was placed in the Excise Department in 2013 and was regularized there as a Class-IV Peon on 31 October 2015.

He sought regularization from 1 January 2009, claiming that he had completed eight years of daily-wage service by then.

1. Whether the petitioner was entitled to regularization in the Forest Department with effect from 1 January 2009, upon completing eight years of daily-wage service.

2. Whether his transfer to the Excise Department entitled him to regularization from 1 January 2009, or an earlier date, in that department.

The State’s regularization policies made completion of eight years’ continuous daily-wage service a condition for consideration, not automatic regularization.

Regularization remained subject to availability of a sanctioned vacant post, prescribed qualifications, seniority-cum-fitness and other policy conditions; the policies did not permit creation of posts for regularization.

The Court relied on Secretary, State of Karnataka v. Uma Devi (2006) 4 SCC 1 and Union of India v. Ilmo Devi (2021) 20 SCC 290 for the principle that regularization cannot be directed contrary to applicable rules or in the absence of sanctioned posts.

It also referred to Article 16 of the Constitution in connection with the requirement to respect seniority and equal consideration.

Although the petitioner had completed eight years of service by 1 January 2009, that fact established only eligibility for consideration under the policies.

The Forest Department stated that senior daily-wage workers remained unregularized for want of vacancies; the petitioner produced no evidence of a vacancy available on the relevant date or of a junior having been regularized over him.

His continuity and seniority did not, by themselves, confer a right to retrospective regularization.

His later placement in the Excise Department and regularization there in 2015 likewise did not establish entitlement to an earlier date, particularly absent evidence that a junior in that department had been regularized ahead of him.

It permitted the petitioner to submit a fresh representation within four weeks seeking regularization against subsequent vacancies or work-charge status; the State authorities were directed to consider it under the applicable policies and law within two months of receipt.

The parties were left to bear their own costs.