India – Supreme Court allows appeal against regularising casual workers for the Border Roads Organisation

The Supreme Court set aside an Uttarakhand High Court judgment directing India’s government to regularise the services of several casual labourers working for the Border Roads Organisation which develops and maintains road networks in India’s border areas and friendly neighboring countries.

The regularisation of all casual paid workers would grant them benefits similar to regular employees.

The Deccan Herald reports that the Supreme Court has now allowed an appeal by India’s government against the Uttarakhand High Court’s judgement to regularise the casual workers.

A single-judge high court bench had, on a petition from the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), directed the government in March 2015 to regularise the workers.

The AITUC had argued that the casual labourers had worked for a long time on a single Border Roads Organisation project in Uttarakhand relating to a pilgrimage, but were being deprived of the salaries, perks and other benefits due to regular government employees.

The Court then directed the government to frame a scheme within three months to regularise all those who had worked for more than five years continuously with the Border Roads Organisation or the allied organisation, the General Reserve Engineering Forces. The court also ordered the government to pay them under the minimum pay scale for the corresponding pay scale of government employees, with all the benefits included.

According to the Telegraph India, the Supreme Court ruled that a “high court cannot frame a scheme for the government or direct it to frame one but only ask it to ‘consider’ framing a particular scheme.”

A bench of justices set aside the high court’s decision passed on 5 December 5, 2016, and said it is the sole prerogative of the government to frame schemes and that courts should stay out of governance.

“All the High Court, in exercise of its extraordinary power under Article 226 of the Constitution, can do is to direct the government to consider for framing an appropriate scheme,” Justice Abhay Manohar Sapre, who wrote the judgment for the Bench, said.

India’s Supreme Court stated, “Casual employment terminates when the same is discontinued, and merely because a temporary or casual worker has been engaged beyond the period of his employment, he would not be entitled to be absorbed in regular service or made permanent.”

Source:: http://www2.staffingindustry.com/row/Editorial/Daily-News/India-Supreme-Court-allows-appeal-against-regularising-casual-workers-for-the-Border-Roads-Organisation-49399