Law: Punjab Regularization of Service Act, 2018

Section: 3(1)

Punjab Regularization of Service Act (XV of 2018)-------S. 3(1)---Contract employee---Regularization in service---Date of regularization of contract employees was the date of their regularization under the relevant Regularization Policy.Contractual employee was appointed under a scheme, which was totally different from that of regular appointment and a contractual appointee did not enjoy the right to be appointed on regular basis or to be readily shifted into the regime of regular appointment. It did not matter if the appointment on contract was through the same process of public advertisement and scrutiny through (Provincial) Public Service Commission, it was still a contractual appointment for a limited period of time and was different from a regular appointment by virtue of which a person attained the status of a civil servant.In the present case, the Regularization Policy [Appointment of Contractees in BS-16 and above on Regular Basis dated 10.11.2010] provided for a special procedure whereby the cases of the contractual employees were considered for regularization on a case-to-case basis, keeping in view their performance and other qualifications. Regularization of a contract employee was, therefore, a fresh appointment into the stream of regular appointment. A contractual employee for the first time became a civil servant. Regularization Policy in question clearly provided that contractual employees enjoyed no vested right to regularization much less to be regularized from any particular date. The benefit of regularization extended to them under the Regularization Policy was prospective in nature and there was no legal justification to give it a retrospective application.Consistent governmental policies on regularization had finally manifested themselves in the Punjab Regularization of Service Act, 2018 (Act) which specifically provided for regularization from immediate effect. Therefore, there had been a consistent design behind the scheme of regularization and it has always been conceived from the date of regularization.Judgment of a five member Bench of this Court dated 29.1.2018, passed in Civil Review Petition No.471/2015 ref.Rana Shamshad Khan,…