Punjab and Haryana High Court: In a petition filed under Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution seeking quashing of the order passed by the respondent through which claim of the petitioners for regularization of their services was rejected, a Single Judge Bench of Harpreet Singh Brar J. ordered the respondent to regularize the services of the petitioners within six weeks and laid down following parameters to ensure timely and effective implementation of the decisions of the Courts:
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Accountability and Responsibility – Each order should clearly specify the officer responsible for its implementation otherwise personal accountability would be recorded in the concerned officer’s service record.
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Statutory Time Limits – There should be mandatory timelines established for implementing judgments related to service, unless higher Court had put a stay.
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Monitoring Mechanism – Every department should establish a centralized judgment implementation cell for tracking compliance, and these would submit quarterly reports to the department head.
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Digital Transparency Tools – The implementation status of court orders should be available on an online portal, providing transparency and allowing employees to monitor the progress of their cases. Further, there should be digitalization of service records to reduce procedural bottlenecks.
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Pre-Litigation Grievance Redressal – Internal grievance mechanisms should be developed to allow employees to seek redressal before approaching the courts for matters already settled in law.
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Training and Awareness – Regular capacity-building initiatives should be conducted to sensitize officers about the constitutional importance of implementing Court orders, the rule of law, and the serious consequences of administrative indifference.
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Performance Appraisals – Compliance with judicial directives should form a part of the measurable performance evaluation criteria in the annual appraisals of administrative officers.
Further, the Court stated that the habitual administrative negligence, indifference, and deliberate delay in implementing court-mandated relief, particularly in service matters concerning employees, was a problem in public institutions.
Background
In the present case, the petitioners had previously approached the Court in Hari Ram v. HVPN Ltd. CWP No. 17563 of 2002 along with one other person (‘VB’) and in compliance of the directions issued, services of the other person were regularized by Haryana Vidyut Prasaran Nigam Ltd. Thereafter, the petitioners again approached this Court in Hari Ram v. State of Haryana CWP No. 35829 of 2019 (O&M) in which directions were issued to the respondents to consider the case of the petitioners in terms of the previous judgment. However, petitioners’ claim for regularization was declined on the ground of non-availability of sanctioned posts.
The petitioners contended that not only were the services of VB regularized but he was also granted all the consequential benefits in terms of the previous judgment. They further stressed that this was the ninth time that they had approached the Court.
Analysis and Decision
The Court pointed out that a trend where long term employees were engaged on an ad hoc basis inspite of the perennial nature of the services rendered by them, has been observed time and again by the Court. Further, the Court stated that the State, being a constitutional employer, could not be allowed to exploit its temporary employees under the garb of lack of sanctioned posts or inability of the employees to meet educational qualifications for regular posts, when they had consistently served its instrumentality for a significant time period.
The Court further stated that such an approach would be violative of the fundamental rights of the temporary employees enshrined in Articles 14, 16 and 21 of the Constitution. The Court opined that the temporary employees could not be forced to bear the brunt of lack of financial resources when the State had no doubts about continuously taking advantage of the services rendered regarding integral and recurring work of the department concerned.
The Court referred to Nihal Singh v. State of Punjab, (2013) 14 SCC 65, and opined that even though the issue regarding denial of regularization on the ground of non-availability of sanctioned posts or having minimum qualification was squarely covered by it, the States of Punjab and Haryana yet formulated policies to circumvent implementation of judgments rendered by the Constitutional Court. The Court further stated that usually the claim for regularization was neither accepted nor denied and the applicant was kept in abeyance unnecessarily.
The Court held that the extended ad-hocism of keeping daily wage workers or contractual employees on temporary rolls for decades while extracting regular work was not only unconstitutional, but it also undermined equality and dignity. The State and its instrumentalities, being model employer, could not perpetuate such exploitation and use excuses like financial constraints, non-availability of sanctioned posts and lack of qualification or as talisman to deny well deserved regularization on account of their persisting nature of long periods of work at par with their counterparts working on regular posts.
Further, the Court stated that tendentious exploitation of prolonged provisional employment was often denounced by Constitutional Courts and time and again reiterated the overarching constitutional goals of equality and dignity in public employment. The State should not pick and choose beneficiaries and therefore it should sort out its perennial workers on a sanctioned foothold, create a budgetary allocation for lawful appointment, and implement directions of the Courts in letter and spirit. Tweaking these directions by introducing a new policy was not merely administrative laxity but rather it was a cognizant technique of denial of well-deserved rights of citizens that erode the livelihoods and dignity of these employees.
The Court expressed its deep remorse that the petitioners had been compelled to approach the Court for the ninth time seeking relief rightfully due to them and theirsuffering due to the inaction of the State. The Court further opined that a consistent problem in public institutions was the habitual administrative negligence, indifference, and deliberate delay in implementing court-mandated relief, particularly in service matters concerning employees and such conduct undermined public confidence in the justice system and defeated the fundamental purpose of judicial adjudication.
The Court stated that “The delivery of judgments alone does not guarantee the credibility of the justice system. True justice is realized only when the administration acts promptly and effectively to enforce the decisions of the courts.”
Further, the Court stated that officers rarely complied with the timelines set by rules or Court orders and instead of addressing the matters on merit, many departments took an adversarial stance by filing unwarranted appeals, sometimes reaching the highest Courts, solely to postpone the grant of relief. As a result, employees faced mental anguish and financial uncertainty during the drawn-out legal proceedings.
Considering that despite clear legal provisions and judicial rulings, employees were frequently forced to endure prolonged litigation to obtain the relief they were entitled to, the Court laid down the following parameters to ensure timely and effective implementation of the decisions of the Courts.
The Court observed that addressing administrative indifference in the execution of Court orders called for a blend of transparent practices, strict accountability, technology-based monitoring, and a shift in bureaucratic culture. “The system should ensure that employees obtain relief without being compelled to engage in repetitive litigation, allowing the rule of law to triumph over bureaucratic inertia. By effectively enforcing these measures, not only will the justice delivery system be fortified, but employees’ trust in both governance and the judiciary will also be significantly restored”.
Allowing the petition, the Court directed the respondent to regularize the services of the petitioners within six weeks and stated that if no order of regularization would be passed within the stipulated period, the petitioners would be deemed to be regularized, and they would be entitled to seniority and regular pay. Further, the Court stated that the petitioners were entitled to all consequential benefits at par with those granted to VB.
The Court stated that any deviation of this judgment by the respondent would entitle the petitioners to move an appropriate application under Article 215 of the Constitution for initiating the contempt proceedings.
[Hari Ram v. State of Haryana, CWP No. 25042 of 2025 (O&M), decided on 8-9-2025]
Advocates who appeared in this case:
For the Petitioner: G.S. Gopera, Advocate
For the Respondents: Piyush Khanna, Addl. AG, Haryana, Sanjeev Kaushik, Advocate and Divyanshu Kaushik, Advocate
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