Civil Writ Petition No. 1933 of 2009 -1- IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA AT CHANDIGARH Civil Writ Petition No. 1933 of 2009 Date of decision: 6th April, 2010 Karnail Singh ........Petitioner Versus State of Punjab and others .......Respondents Before: HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE SURYA KANT 1. Whether Reporters of local papers may be allowed to see the judgment? Yes/No. 2. To be referred to the Reporters or not? Yes/No. 3. Whether the judgment should be reported in the Digest? Yes/No. Present: Mr. K.L.Arora, Advocate, for the petitioner. Ms. Charu Tuli. D.A.G., Punjab, for the respondent-State. Surya Kant, J.(Oral) 1. The petitioner was employed by the respondents as Mali-cum-Chowkidar at Muktsar on daily wages w.e.f., 1.12.1987 (Annexure P-1) and he retired on attaining the age of superannuation of 60 years w.e.f., 31.08.2007 (Annexure P-2). Vide a subsequent order dated 6.10.2008 (Annexure P-6), it appears that services of the petitioner were regularized w.e.f., 1.02.2002. 2. Since, the regular service rendered by the petitioner is less than ten years, the respondents have declined to grant him Civil Writ Petition No. 1933 of 2009 -2- the retiral and pensionary benefits. 3. Aggrieved the petitioner has approached this Court and seeks a direction that the service rendered by him on daily wages be also counted as 'qualifying service' for the purpose of pensionary and other retiral benefits. 4. The question as to whether or not the service rendered by a daily wager before regularization of his services should count towards 'qualifying service' for pension etc; is no longer res integra as a Division Bench of this Court in Civil Writ No. 18814 of 2007, decided on 25.07.2008, (Sadhu Singh and others versus State of Punjab and others) has ruled that the daily wages service followed by regularization has to be treated as 'qualifying service' to for the grant of pension and other retiral benefits. 5. It is stated by the learned counsel for the petitioner that the State of Punjab preferred SLP (Civil Appeal No. 5442 of 2009) which has already been dismissed by the Hon'ble Supreme Court on 22.04.2009. 6. The Division Bench held as follows:- “We do not feel very happy to notice that suck like petitions are presented before us every day. We fail to understand as to how the respondent State and its authorities are dealing such like cases by rejecting the claim of the employees and forcing all regular employees to Civil Writ Petition No. 1933 of 2009 -3- approach this Court for counting of their work charge, daily wage and ad hoc service as qualifying service. We are daily receiving spate of petitions, which demonstrate complete disregard to the rules. Such an attitude by the respondent State has to be adversely commented and is condemnable. We cannot ignore the fact that there may be many other employees entitled to the relief of pension and other retiral benefits who may not be aware of their rights and may also be able to approach this Court. Therefore, in the era of globalization the State cannot shirk its responsibility to ensure that all its employees get their dues without forcing everyone of them to seek directions from this Court. In order to evolve some mechanism of ensuring that service rendered by work charged, daily wage basis and ad hoc employee is counted as qualifying service for pension in case they are regularised, we direct that the respondent State may look into the matter and develop a mechanism aimed at avoiding litigation by such employees.” 7. For the reasons assigned in Sadhu Singh's case (supra), the writ petition is allowed, with a direction to the Civil Writ Petition No. 1933 of 2009 -4- respondents to grant the pension and other retiral service benefits to the petitioner after taking into account his entire service including the daily wages service rendered by him before regularisation of his services. The needful shall be done as early as possible and preferably within a period of three months from the date of receipt of a certified copy of this order. 8. Ordered accordingly. 9. Dasti. [SURYA KANT] JUDGE 6th April, 2010 Shivani Kaushik