Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Aug 22: High Court while dismissing the bunch of petitions has held that petitioners having been terminated after the expiry of their contract have no vested right of continuance and thereafter regularization as is claimed by them.
The petitioners, having accepted their engagement, shall be deemed to have accepted the terms and conditions of the engagement as well. It is not only once but at different stages the petitioners were made aware about the nature of engagement.
The advertisement notification clearly provided that the engagement is purely contractual and only for a period of one year with no right of extension or regularization. When the engagement letters were issued in favour of the candidates like the petitioner, who were selected pursuant to the advertisement notification, it was once again made it clear to the petitioners and the engagees that their appointment is purely temporary, contractual and for a fixed period of one year.
This significant order has been passed in bunch of petitions filed by the petitioners who were engaged as Subject Specific Teachers under Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan. The scheme is now subsumed and covered under Samagra Shiksha scheme.
The petitioners, as is the case set up by them, were engaged/hired to provide SSTs for 110 up-graded High Schools, purely on contractual basis for one year on different dates indicated in the orders of their provisional engagement issued by the State Project Director, RMSA. The engagement was contractual in nature and for a period of one year on consolidated salary of Rs 30,283 per month.
The initial contractual engagement of the petitioners came to an end after the expiry of period of one year, however, vide Government Order No. 222-Edu of 2019 dated 09-07-2019, the Government accorded sanction to the temporary re-hiring of 550 SSTs for 110 High Schools upgraded under RMSA, who had already rendered their services during the year 2019, up to 30-06-2019 purely on contract basis from 10-07-2019 to 10-08-2019 in winter zone and from 15-07-2019 to 15-08-2019 in summer zone. It was specifically provided that re-hiring shall be terminated on 10-08-2019 in winter zone and with effect from 15-08-2019 in summer zone or when provision of regular teaching staff is made by the department by way of rationalization, whichever was earlier.
This is how, the petitioners, who had earlier worked for one year, also came to be re-hired for one month in terms of the Government order and were terminated as per the stipulation contained therein. The petitioners are not in service with effect from 10-08-2019 in winter zone and 15-08-2019 in summer zone. The petitioners are aggrieved of the action of the respondents taken in terms of Government order No. 222-Edu of 2019 and seek writ of mandamus commanding and directing the respondents to re-hire them as SSTs in the upgraded high schools, primarily on the ground that the need, for which the petitioners were engaged as SSTs, still exists.
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