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‘Regularise service of sanitary workers’
A full bench of the Madras High Court in a special sitting on Tuesday made it clear that sanitary workers employed in Municipalities are entitled to be regularised with a time-scale of pay from the date of their initial appointment and not from the date they complete three years of service.
Chennai
The full bench comprising Justice S Manikumar, Justice S Nagamuthu and Justice R Mahadevan, before whom the review petitions were filed against the earlier order of a full bench on November 29, 2013, said, “In the present case, the right to be considered for regularisation on completion of the mandatory period had accrued to the petitioners on the date of their appointment. The only condition to be satisfied is the required number of days, of course without blemish. Therefore, any subsequent Government Order (GO) cannot take away the fundamental right of the petitioners to be considered for appointment.”
The matter relates to the appointment of as many as 204 sanitary workers appointed in the year 1999 and 2000 in different Municipalities in Tamil Nadu. Their services were regularised from October 31, 2006 vide two GOs dated May 5, 1998 and another GO issued on February 23, 2006. These workers filed writ petitions stating that their service ought to have been regularised with effect from the date of their initial appointment and not from the date on which they completed three years of service.
While a division bench and a single judge had taken different views on the issue the matter was referred to a larger bench. The full bench then had upheld the GOs which had offered regularisation from the date wherein they completed three years of service.
Based on this, the present review petition was moved. The full bench on citing a Supreme Court order that protection under Articles 14 and 16(1) of the Constitution of India is available even to temporary government servants and if the action of the employer is found to be arbitrary or discriminatory it is liable to be invalidated, ruled in favour of the sanitary workers.
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