The Allahabad High Court has held that an ad hoc employee regularised under the U.P. Regularization of Ad-Hoc Appointments (on Posts Outside the Purview of Public Service Commission) Rules, 1979 cannot claim that his regularisation be treated as effective from the date of his initial ad hoc appointment or from the date on which he became eligible for regularisation.

It held that under the scheme of the Rules, regularisation runs only from the date of the order of regularisation.

Rule 4 of the 1979 Rules, as amended in 2001, makes an ad hoc appointee engaged on or before 30.06.1998, who held the prescribed qualifications and has completed three years' service, eligible to be considered against an available vacancy. Rules 4 and 5 require a Selection Committee, an eligibility list in order of seniority, and appointments from the select list in the order in which the names stand.

Justice Anish Kumar Gupta held,

“..rules do not provide that all the candidates who are found eligible by the Selection Committee are to be given appointment at one go. They are to be given appointment against regular permanent vacancy only. Thus, as and when the vacancies so occur, such ad hoc candidates are required to be regularized and their seniority will depend from the date of the order of the appointment. Thus, for all practical purposes regularization is required to be considered from the date of the order of appointment in terms of the aforesaid 1979 Rules.”

The petitioner was appointed as Munshi on ad hoc basis on 28.03.1992 by the Deputy Director of Irrigation Water Resource Department, Chandrapuri, Sambhal, and stood at Serial No. 74 in the seniority list of ad hoc employees prepared on 28.09.2001. He was regularised only by an order dated 28.04.2016, with effect from the date of that order. He sought its quashing, praying that his regularisation be treated as effective from 28.03.1992 or at least from 20.12.2001, when the Third Amendment Rules came into force.

For the petitioner, it was argued that he answered every condition in Rule 4 and that his regularisation ought to have been granted from the date on which he became eligible, if not from the date of his initial appointment.

The State submitted that the appointment was made dehors the rules and that the appointment letter itself recorded the service as purely temporary and terminable on one month's notice. Under the 1979 Rules, it was submitted, regularisation is subject to the availability of regular vacancies and to seniority, and mere eligibility does not entitle a person to be regularised automatically.

By supplementary affidavit, the petitioner relied on an order dated 11.10.2019 by which one Ramakant Tiwari, Junior Clerk, regularised by an identically worded order of 28.04.2016, was later regularised from 04.04.1999, his date of initial joining.

Rejecting that claim, the Court referred to the Supreme Court's decision in Uday Pratap Thakur v. State of Bihar, which it read as drawing a categorical distinction between a regular appointment to a substantive post and an ad hoc, work-charged or temporary appointment made without the proper procedure.

“this Court is of the considered view that regularization order cannot be given effect to prior to the date of order of regularization order.”

Holding that the claim for negative parity could not be acceded to, the Court dismissed the petition.

Case Title: Dharmendra Kumar Vishwakarma v. State Of U.P. Thru. Secy. And 3 Others

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