Raipur/Bilaspur. In Chhattisgarh, the issue of regularization of contractual and irregular employees has been echoing in the political circles for the last 10 years. Employees have also agitated several times demanding regularization. If we talk about the previous Bhupesh government, he had promised the employees that the contract employees would be regularized as soon as they came to power, but even after five years, Congress did not fulfill its promise. But meanwhile, yesterday the Supreme Court has given a big decision in the interest of contractual employees.
Actually, 98 employees including Vijay Kumar Gupta were working as daily wage earners in Guru Ghasidas University. All these employees were working for about 10 years or more since the establishment of the university. In the year 2008, an order was issued by the General Administration Department to regularize all these employees. According to the order issued, employees who had served for 10 years or more were to be regularized. In compliance with this order, the Director of Higher Education also ordered on 26 August 2008 to give regularization and regular pay scale to such employees working in the department under the self-financing scheme. They were also given regular salaries till March 2009. After this, the university had stopped paying regular salaries without giving any information or notice.
Without giving the employees an opportunity of being heard, an order was issued to give them pay scale at collector rate. Along with this, on 10 February 2010, the then Registrar also canceled the regularization of governance issued on 22 September 2008. Challenging this order of the Registrar, the employees had filed a petition in the High Court through advocate Deepali Pandey. It was informed that Guru Ghasidas University has been accepted as a central university by the state government. Therefore, all the employees working under the State Government should be included in the Central University in the same status as the employees were working in the State University. But, the university officials did not do so.
After a long hearing of this case, the Division Bench of the High Court had reserved the decision on 22 November 2022. On which on March 6, the court gave its verdict in favor of the employees. Also accepting the petition, the court declared him entitled to all benefits as a regular employee from the date of regularization as before. Daily wage workers have been struggling for their rights for the last 11 years. The university filed an SLP in the Supreme Court against this decision of the High Court. This case was heard by the Supreme Court bench of Justice Hrishikesh Roy and Justice Prashant Mishra. After hearing all the parties, the Division Bench said that there is no strong ground to interfere with the High Court order in the matter of regularizing daily wage earners who have been working for more than two decades. Therefore the petition is dismissed.
