Employees regularisation: High court overturns single bench order

The single bench order had voided regularisation of 125,000 govt employees

ISLAMABAD:

The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Thursday set aside its single bench order which had declared regularisation of contractual and daily wage employees void.

A two-judge bench, comprising Justice Athar Minallah and Justice Aamer Farooq, set aside the order given by Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui on May 29, 2014.

Justice Siddiqui had declared null and void the decision taken by a cabinet committee headed by Khursheed Shah during the PPP government.

Justice Siddiqui had observed that the 125,000 employees were appointed without following rules and competitive process.

However, over 150 petitioners from different departments, including education and health, challenged the decision and requested the court to set aside the single bench decision.

They had filed an intra court appeal (ICA) against the judgment, which brought success on Thursday.

Previously, a division bench comprising IHC chief justice Muhammad Anwar Khan Kasi and Justice Noorul Haq N Qureshi had suspended the single bench orders.

In Thursday’s hearing, the division bench in its judgment observed that the services of an employee could only be terminated due to misconduct, or use of forged or falsified documents.

The bench disposed of the matter after the cabinet division explained that it has formed a committee to examine cases forwarded to it for regularisation. Any federal government department could forward cases, and the committee would then decide on them.

In the last hearing, cabinet additional secretary Khusro Pervez had told the court that federal government had formed a committee which will examine the ongoing regularisation of the contractual and daily wage employees.

The committee will not only examine cases for regularisation, but will also examine irregularities in past regularisation.

The petitioners through their counsel had maintained that the single judge order had neither given independent reasons, nor assessed the arguments of the parties.

A cabinet’s subcommittee on July 25, 2012 had, through similar procedures, regularised the services of 150,000 employees and it would be discrimination if the cabinet’s sub-committee’s recommendation for the 125,000 employees would not be accepted, the counsels said.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 10^th, 2015.