In a significant challenge to the State of Punjab's selective application of its own regularisation policies, the Supreme Court took up the case of a group of ad hoc peons and clerks appointed in the Department of Finance, Treasuries and Accounts Branch, who served for over a decade, watched hundreds of identically placed colleagues get regularised, and yet found themselves dismissed without any cogent explanation. At the heart of the matter lay a troubling question of administrative fairness: can a state government invoke minor, employer-manufactured service breaks to exclude specific employees from the very welfare policies it designed for workers exactly like them?
The controversy began three decades ago when the appellants were taken on as ad hoc peons and clerks in 1995–96, appointed against existing vacancies, not artificial surplus posts, and continued discharging their duties to the satisfaction of their superiors. Over the years, Punjab issued successive regularisation policies in 2003, 2006, and 2011, each designed to absorb long-serving ad hoc workers into permanent service. Thousands of similarly situated employees across state departments were regularised under these schemes. The appellants' cases, however, were inexplicably held back, and in January 2008 they received dismissal orders, the State claiming they were ineligible because their tenures contained breaks ranging from five to 187 days, rendering their service non-continuous.
Counsel for the appellants shot back that 46 other ad hoc employees, whose service records contained far longer breaks of 64 to 334 days, had already been regularised without objection, a fact the State did not dispute. Counsel for the respondents maintained that the appellants had entered service through the backdoor without a formal selection process and therefore held no vested right to regularisation. Both the Single Bench and the Division Bench of the Punjab & Haryana High Court upheld the dismissal, prompting the workers to carry their three-decade fight to the Supreme Court.
The Court found the State's reasoning hollow on every count. On the break-in-service argument, the bench was unsparing, observing that the interruptions were artificial in character, the appellants had been consistently re-engaged after each short gap and continued working on the same posts, reflecting no genuine abandonment of employment whatsoever. The Court held pointedly, "The breaks do not reflect any genuine abandonment of service or voluntary cessation of employment. Therefore, we are of the opinion that the long service of the Appellants cannot be disregarded in lieu of artificial breaks and by leveling the initial employment as ad hoc." With 46 comparable employees already regularised despite longer breaks, a fact left uncontested by the State, the Court found that selective exclusion of the appellants without any cogent justification was constitutionally impermissible.
Accordingly, the appeal was allowed, the 2008 dismissal orders were set aside, the appellants were deemed to be in continuous service without any break, and the State was directed to pass regularisation orders within four weeks, with full continuity of service, increments, and retiral benefits calculated accordingly.
Case Title: Prem Chand And Others vs State Of Punjab And Another
Case No.: Civil Appeal No(s).12139/2025
Coram: Hon'ble . Justice Sanjay Karol Hon'ble . Justice Augustine George Masih
Advocate for the Petitioner: AOR .Tushar Bakshi, AOR
Advocate for the Respondent: Sr. Adv. Shadan FarasatTalha D.A.G .Abdul Rehman, , AOR . Nupur Kumar, Adv.. Arkaprava Dass,
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