New Delhi: The Delhi high court on Monday asked the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) whether it had any policy on regularisation of contractual employees.
The court was hearing an appeal filed by the university’s 26 contractual employees, who are ex-servicemen and working as mess managers, advisors and maintenance managers, seeking regularisation of services and an appropriate pay scale.
They have been working with the university since 1980s for a measly salary of Rs 2500 per month and 24 of them have now retired.
A bench of justices S. Ravindra Bhat and Sunil Gaur said it was a fit case for considering regularisation of services. The court said the facts show that there was a need for a policy on regularisation of such employees and asked the varsity lawyer Monika Arora about the the JNU’s stand on the issue.
She sought some time from the court to respond, The court, thereafter, listed the matter for next hearing on November 30.
A single judge bench of the high court had in December 2015 dismissed the petition in which the petitioners had sought a fixed salary in an appropriate scale.
The petition, which was filed in 1999 before the single judge bench had sought regularised services of the contractual employees by framing an appropriate scheme on it and a directive to pay the arrears in terms of difference in salary after pay fixation.
The appeal, filed through advocate R.K. Saini and Varun Nagrath, sought setting aside of the single judge’s order on the ground that it was causing a miscarriage of justice and an irreparable loss to the petitioners
They claimed their tenure in the university is extended on an yearly basis. The petitioners also added that they were qualified and retired between 35 to 48 years after completing service in armed forces.
The contractual employees submitted that they were eligible to be appointed on a civil post for which the minimum educational qualifications required was graduation according to the central government’s notification in a 1986 gazette.
