IHC declares judgment against regularisation of employees as void

ISLAMABAD: A division bench of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) comprising Justice Athar Minallah and Justice Aamir Farooq here Thursday set aside a judgment of May 29, 2014 of IHC single bench that had declared the recommendations of former PPP government’s sub-committee for regularisation of the contractual and daily wage employees as null and void.
More than 100 employees of different federal government departments had filed an Intra-Court Appeal (ICA) against the judgment that was accepted on Thursday. The ICA was filed against the single bench order and on June 16, 2014 an IHC division bench comprising IHC Chief Justice Muhammad Anwar Khan Kasi and Justice Noorul Haq N Qureshi had suspended the single bench order that had annulled the recommendations for 1,25,000 contractual and daily wage employees of the federal government.
PPP leader Syed Khursheed Shah headed the cabinet’s sub-committee in the previous government.During today’s hearing, IHC division bench in its judgment observed that the services of an employee could only be terminated due to misconduct or fake degree.
IHC bench disposed of the matter after cabinet division told that it had formed a high power committee that would examine cases forwarded to it for regularisation. Any department of federal government could forward cases and this committee would then decide these cases.
Last hearing Cabinet Division Additional Secretary Khusro Pervez had told IHC that federal government had formed a committee that would examine the ongoing regularization of the contractual and daily wage employees. Committee would not only examine the cases of federal government’s contractual and daily wage employees for regularization and it would also examine irregularities in the regularisation process.
Petitioners through their counsel had adopted that the single judge in its order had neither given independent reasons nor assessed arguments of the parties. A cabinet’s sub-committee on July 25, 2012 through similar procedure regularised the services of 150,000 employees and it would be discrimination if the cabinet’s sub-committee’s recommendation for the 1,25,000 employees would not be accepted. Moreover on human level the single bench order would affect lives of around 1,25,000 regular employees.
It is to mention here that IHC single bench comprising Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui on May 29, 2014 directed all the institutions/organisations of the federal government to properly examine and verify record of the regularised employees and only endorse the regularization of those employees who fulfilled the criteria in respect of educational qualification, experience, age and domicile.The ICA was disposed of pursuant to the orders.