This petition was filed by the Board of Intermediate & Secondary Education, D.G. Khan, challenging a judgment of the Lahore High Court which directed the regularization of the respondents' services. The respondents had been employed as Drivers, Clerks, Naib Qasids, and Security Guards on a daily wage basis for significant periods, some dating back to 1996. The core legal issue concerned the practice of terminating employment contracts every 89 days and resuming them after a one-day interval to prevent the continuity of service. The Supreme Court observed that the respondents had served for more than nine months and that the artificial breaks were introduced with mala fide intent to avoid legal obligations regarding regularization. The Court upheld the High Court's decision, finding no legal lacuna in the order that restrained the Board from making fresh appointments through advertisement while the respondents' services had matured for regularization. Consequently, the petition was dismissed, affirming that artificial breaks in service cannot be used to deny employees their right to regularization.
Maqbool Baqar, J.--Brought into question, through this petition is the judgment dated 25.9.2017, whereby a learned Division Bench of the Lahore High Court dismissed in limine the appeal filed by the petitioner-Board challenging the order dated 01.6.2017, in terms whereof a learned Single Judge of the said Court allowed the writ petition filed by the respondents for their regularization in service with the petitioner-Board.
2. The respondents were employed by the petitioner-Board, they have been working as Drivers, Clerks, Naib Qasids and Security Guards, for a considerable period of time, on daily wages. Some of them have been so working since the year 1996. However, their employment contracts were terminated after every 89 days and were resumed a day there after. All of them have certainly served the petitioner-Board for not less than nine months, however with artificial breaks, as noted above, this was done to break the continuity of their service with mala fide intent to avoid their regularization. The respondents, despite the fact that their services had matured and were under the law required to be regularized, and instead of doing so, as noted in the judgment of the learned Single Judge, contemplated to make fresh appointments through advertisement, which prompted the respondents to file the writ petition which culminated into the impugned judgment.
3. We in the circumstances as noted above, do not find any lacuna in impugned judgment, legal or otherwise, and find no justification for interfering with the same. The petition is therefore dismissed.