Regularization parity requires proof that comparable employees in the same Zilla Panchayat were regularized.

In brief

The question

1. Whether the petitioner was entitled to regularization, with consequential benefits, after accepting benefits under the 2012 Act and retiring from service.

The court held

The Court declined to interfere with the Tribunal’s order and dismissed the writ petition.

It also directed

The petitioner’s claim for regularization and consequential benefits was therefore rejected.

01Facts

The petitioner was appointed as a daily-wage Literate Assistant in the Public Works Department at Chickmagalur on 10 September 1984 and was transferred to Hassan in 2000.

p. 3, 7

He was included among employees eligible for benefits under the Karnataka Daily Wage Employees Welfare Act, 2012, and accepted those benefits, including gratuity and other retirement benefits upon superannuation on 30 May 2015.

pp. 3–4, 7

In 2018, he sought regularization with effect from completion of ten years’ service in 1994, claiming parity with employees he said had been regularized.

p. 4

The Karnataka State Administrative Tribunal rejected his application; he challenged that order under Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution.

p. 2, 6

02Issues

i.1. Whether the petitioner was entitled to regularization, with consequential benefits, after accepting benefits under the 2012 Act and retiring from service.

pp. 4–6, 9

ii.2. Whether the petitioner established a right to regularization on parity with employees said to have been regularized.

pp. 4, 7–10

03Law Applied

The Court considered the Karnataka Daily Wage Employees Welfare Act, 2012, under which the petitioner had received the benefits available to him as a daily-wage employee; it did not identify a specific provision of the Act as creating an entitlement to regularization.

pp. 3–4, 7, 9

It also considered Prem Ram v. Uttarakhand Pey Jal & Nirman Nigam, (2015) 11 SCC 255, and Jivanlal v. Pravin Krishna, (2016) 15 SCC 747. The Court distinguished those decisions because the claimants there had established regularization of comparable employees, whereas this petitioner produced no regularization order for similarly situated employees in Hassan.

pp. 8–10

04Reasoning

The petitioner’s claim of parity was unsupported by evidence that employees working with him in Hassan had been regularized.

pp. 7–8

The attendance register he relied on concerned employees who, after his transfer, appear to have been regularized in Chickmagalur; the Court treated the Chickmagalur and Hassan Zilla Panchayats as separate units and held that the petitioner could not claim parity on that basis.

pp. 7–8

The precedents cited did not assist him because he had not produced comparable regularization orders.

pp. 8–10

The Court also noted that he had accepted the benefits available under the 2012 Act and his retirement benefits, and sought regularization only after retirement.

pp. 3–6, 9