The Madras High Court on Wednesday lamented that recruiting select individuals as daily wage earners and then absorbing them in regular government service appeared to be the modus operandi followed by successive governments in the Union Territory of Puducherry for legalising “back door and side door” appointments.
A Division Bench of Justices K.K. Sasidharan and R. Subramanian made the observation while disposing of a couple of writ appeals preferred by the Government of Puducherry last year, challenging a single judge order to employ a few individuals in the post of helper in the Pondicherry Engineering College.
‘Not in public interest’
The Bench said that it had been a regular phenomenon in Puducherry to make “back door” recruitment without the availability of sanctioned posts. The result of such a practice was that many government-sponsored societies, cooperative societies and other government undertakings were not in a position to pay salaries because of paucity of funds.
“The government appears to have not addressed this issue so far. This is a serious matter which requires the immediate consideration of the government in larger public interest,” Mr. Justice Sasidharan said while penning the judgment for the Bench, and ordered a comprehensive service audit to fix the cadre strength. “It would not be in the public interest to encourage such illegal appointments,” the Bench said.
In so far as the present writ appeals were concerned, the government took a policy decision to give preference in employment to families whose lands had been acquired for the college. The college appointed 132 people as Non Muster Roll (NMR) employees and their services were regularised after a few years.
Two of the applicants filed a writ petition in 2012. Even as their case had been pending, the college went ahead and regularised the services of about 23 casual workers in 2015 forcing them to file another writ petition challenging the regularisations. The single judge on February 10, 2017 refused to interfere.