High Court directs Punjab to regularise service of jail warder who died 10 years ago

Shingara Singh’s widow, Kashmir Kaur, had approached the high court challenging the rejection of his regularisation claim and the subsequent denial of family pension and other retiral benefits.

Shingara Singh was appointed as a warder on an ad hoc basis against a sanctioned post on November 7, 1989, and joined the service on December 2 that year. On October 27, 2016, he was transferred from Central Jail, Patiala, to Central Jail, Faridkot, where he fell seriously ill soon after and died on November 11, 2016.

Appearing for his widow, Advocate AK Walia submitted that Shingara Singh had been appointed against a sanctioned post and had served continuously for nearly 27 years. Walia submitted that under government instructions issued on May 7, 1993, several warders appointed along with him, and even some junior to him, had been regularised between 1992 and 2001.

The counsel submitted that Shingara Singh’s case had also been placed before a departmental committee but was ignored. Walia argued that Shingara Singh’s right to regularisation had accrued during his lifetime and the consequential claim for family pension and other retiral benefits cannot be denied merely because he died before issuance of a formal regularisation order.

Counsel for Punjab, NPS Hira argued that Shingara Singh had remained an ad hoc employee throughout his service and no regularisation order had been passed before his death.

The State also relied on his service record, citing instances of unauthorised absence, punishments and Annual Confidential Reports that were mostly average or below average. The State further contended that regularisation could not be granted posthumously and, consequently, his widow could not claim family pension or other benefits available to regular employees.

The High Court, however, said the case was not about whether Shingara Singh could be regularised after his death. “The real question is whether the deceased had acquired an enforceable right to regularization during his lifetime which the respondents failed to recognize and whether such accrued right could thereafter be defeated merely because no formal order had been passed before his death. In the considered opinion of this Court, the answer must be in the negative,” the court said.

The Bench found that the State had failed to produce records to support its claim that Shingara Singh had not appeared before the departmental committee constituted in 2003.

“Except for a bald assertion in the written statement, no contemporaneous record has been produced to establish that any notice was issued to the deceased, that he deliberately abstained from the proceedings, or that the Committee ever rejected his candidature.

Neither the proceedings of the Committee nor the attendance record has been placed on record.,” it noted, while adding, “A plea unsupported by any official record cannot be accepted to deprive an employee of valuable service rights accrued over decades.”

The court also held that Shingara Singh had been treated differently from similarly situated employees who had been regularised, and that the State could not benefit from its own failure to act on his case.

“Such an approach permits the employer to derive benefit from its own inaction and cannot be countenanced in law,” it observed.

The Bench consequently quashed the government orders rejecting Shingara Singh’s claim and directed Punjab to regularise his service from the deemed date applicable to his similarly situated co-employees.