Govt Department Can't Terminate Outsourced Employee; Can Only Recommend Action To Agency: Rajasthan High Court
The Rajasthan High Court has held an employee working with government through an outsourcing agency can't be terminated by the department and the proper recourse is to request or recommend action to the concerned agency.The bench of Justice Munnuri Laxman made the observation while dealing with a case where the Petitioner was working as State Coordinator E-Governance under Rashtriya Gram...
The Rajasthan High Court has held an employee working with government through an outsourcing agency can't be terminated by the department and the proper recourse is to request or recommend action to the concerned agency.
The bench of Justice Munnuri Laxman made the observation while dealing with a case where the Petitioner was working as State Coordinator E-Governance under Rashtriya Gram Swaraja Abhiyan of the Panchayati Raj Department, through an outsourcing agency, and his services were terminated by the concerned department.
The Court noted that instead of approaching the agency with the grievance, the government had directly terminated the petitioner treating him as their employee.
Disagreeing with such an approach, the Court stated,
“This Court finds that the petitioner's employer is the outsourcing agency and if the Joint Secretary of Department has any grievance with regard to the services rendered by the petitioner, he can only request or recommend to the concerned outsourcing agency to consider his grievance and take appropriate decision thereupon. Instead, the Joint Secretary resorted to an action directly terminating the services of the petitioner as if the petitioner is his employee.”
Accordingly, the termination order was set aside, and the matter was remanded to the Joint Secretary to approach the outsourcing agency with the grievance.
Title: Chetan Prakash Sharma v State of Rajasthan
Citation: 2026 LiveLaw (Raj) 149
Title: Chetan Prakash Sharma v State of Rajasthan
Citation: 2026 LiveLaw (Raj) 146