Shimla, Aug 26 Himachal Pradesh High Court has held that the state must behave like a model employer, irrespective of persons in power and change in guard.
A division bench further held the extension of service benefits to one kind of temporary appointment is equally applicable to similar temporary appointment with different nomenclature.
The bench comprising Justice Vivek Singh Thakur and Justice Bipin Chander Negi passed this order on a petition seeking direction to the respondents to extent the benefits of contract service to the petitioners.
One of the petitioners had initially served as Junir Basic Teacher (JBT) on contract and later appointed on a regular basis as Shastri.
The second petitioner was also appointed as JBT, on contract and later regularized on the same post, without interruption following to his contract appointment. Thus the claim of one petitioner is slightly different from that of another petitioner.
The court held that “where an employee has served on a contract basis on different posts and has been regularised on some other post, his ad hoc tenure shall be counted only for the purpose of pension. Whereas, an employee appointed on contract is appointed on a regular basis on the same post without interruption, his contract service has to be counted for the purpose of annual increment as well as pensionary benefits.”
However, the court found that despite repeated observations as well as directions of the courts in numerous cases the state “keeps on to formulate, adopt and practice exploitative policies as a device to avoid extension of legitimate benefits of the employees. The state tries to deprive the employee of the legitimate benefit by changing nomenclature of post and scheme to continue with practice of temporary or ad hoc appointments.”
The judges observed the appointment of voluntary teachers, ad hoc teachers, Vidya Upasaks, contract teachers, Para teachers, PAT, PTA and SMC teachers are examples of clever phraseology devised by the state to overcome directions of the courts in order to avoid permanent appointments by appointing ad hoc or temporary teachers and depriving them of service benefits available to regular employees.
They ordered to extend the actual consequential financial benefits to the petitioner three years prior to filing of the petition and the benefits beyond three years prior to filing of the petition shall be extended on a notional basis.
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