The Rajasthan High Court has dismissed the special appeal filed by the State against a single judge's order directing regularization of the respondents, opining that an abrupt termination of the respondents by the appellants in the past was a mechanism adopted by the department to deprive employees from the fruits of regularization.

The division bench of Justice Vinit Kumar Mathur and Justice Chandra Shekhar Sharma observed the despite there being the availability of work of perennial nature, the State made periodical appointments/engagements, to avoid giving regularized appointments to individuals.

For context, the respondents were appointed as veterinary officers in 2013, and were abruptly terminated from service in the past, against which they approached the Court and were ordered to be reinstated. Since then, they had been in service for almost 10 years on the force of the Court's order.

Based on this continuous service of 10 years, when the respondents approached the appellants for regularization, it was denied, against which a petition was filed and the single judge allowed the petition, thereby ordering regularization of the respondent. This order was challenged by the state before the division bench.

It was the case of the appellants that since the respondents were irregularly appointed on an urgent temporary basis, their services were not entitled to be regularized. Further, it was submitted that since the respondents were in service due to the interim orders of the Court, it could not be deemed that they had completed 10 years of uninterrupted service.

After hearing the contentions, the Court rejected the argument put forth by the appellants and made a reference to the Supreme Court decision in Jaggo v UOI & Ors. in which the Apex Court had considered the cases of employees whose services were terminated by the department on certain occasions, and they were deprived of regularization. It was highlighted,

“The Hon'ble Supreme Court held that such orders of termination would not, by themselves, dis-entitle an employee from consideration for regularization, provided that the employee otherwise satisfies the requirements laid down in the judgment rendered in State of Karnataka v. Uma Devi.”

In this background, the Court observed,

“…abrupt termination of the services of an employee by the respondent-Department is nothing, but a mechanism adopted by the Department to deprive employees from the fruits of regularization of their services…the practice adopted by the Government is nothing but an attempt to deprive employees from getting the regular service and, consequently, regular emoluments for the work done by them.”

Accordingly, the appeal was dismissed, and it was held that the respondents were entitled to regularization of their services.