Himachal Pradesh High Court: A Division Bench comprising of Surya Kant, CJ and Ajay Mohan Goel, J., disposed of a writ petition whereby absorption in government service was allowed irrespective of the source of salary paid.
Intra-Court appeals which arose out of a common and same set of judgments were filed before the High Court. It was contended by the respondent that the appellant issued a notification whereby it decided to take over a college where he was working as a lecturer on a regular basis and hence the services of teaching and non teaching staff were taken over of which he was denied the benefit which calls for discrimination under Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution of India. In the second case, the claim was rejected as the respondent was not recruited through an open competitive selection process but covered a considerable time at her employment.
The appellant contended that since the salary the respondent receives was by Self-Financing Scheme and not Grant-in-Aid released by the Department of Education, therefore she fell out of the scope of benefit.
The Court came to the conclusion that acquisition of a college was required in a larger public interest and thus the source of payment was not a consideration with both kind of employees forming a homogeneous class and no artificial discrimination could be made amongst them and hence the respondent stood absorbed in the service. For the second case, the respondent was allowed service on account of sympathetic consideration. However, such absorption will be on notional basis and she will be entitled to salary from the date of actual appointment. The appeals were disposed of accordingly.[State of H.P v. Kamlesh Kumar,2018 SCC OnLine HP 1581, decided on 30-10-2018]
