Death cannot end accrued right to regularisation, says Allahabad HC

The Allahabad High Court directed Uttar Pradesh authorities to treat a deceased Rural Engineering Department work-charge employee as regularised from the date he became eligible, holding that death cannot extinguish an accrued right. It also ordered consideration of his son’s compassionate appointment

Lucknow: Describing the conduct of authorities as “ex-facie contemptuous”, the Allahabad High Court has directed them to treat a deceased work-charge employee of the Uttar Pradesh government’s Rural Engineering Department as regularised from the date he became eligible, holding that his death could not end his accrued right to consideration for regularisation.

Justice Indrajeet Shukla of the Lucknow bench on Friday also directed the authorities to consider the claim of the employee’s son for compassionate appointment under the Uttar Pradesh Recruitment of Dependants of Government Servants Dying in Harness Rules, 1974.

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The exercise has to be completed within two months of production of the certified copy of the order, the court said. It was hearing a petition filed by Hasan Ahmad, whose father Rifakat Hussain was engaged as a junior assistant in the work-charge establishment of the Rural Engineering Department in Hardoi on November 1, 1985. He died on August 11, 2012, after serving the department for over 18 years.

His name figured at serial number 58 in a seniority list prepared for regularisation in 2005. The court noted that 172 Group-C posts had been sanctioned in 2012 for regularisation of daily-wage, work-charge and court-case employees.

However, Hussain died before the regularisation process could be completed, while other similarly placed employees were regularised.
The bench came down heavily on the authorities for repeatedly rejecting the claim despite earlier court directions.

It observed that the impugned order of March 17, 2023 was passed in defiance of an earlier binding direction and described the conduct of the authorities as “ex-facie contemptuous”.

The court held that the right to consideration for regularisation, once accrued, does not disappear merely because the employee dies before the process is completed. Such a right can survive through the legal representatives.

Observing that the petitioner had been compelled to pursue prolonged litigation because of the authorities’ repeated refusal to comply with its directions, the court awarded Rs 50,000 as costs to him. The court accordingly allowed the writ petition and directed communication of its order to the secretary, Rural Engineering Department and the director and chief engineer of the department.