The High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh has provided substantial relief to numerous employees of the Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS) who are working in migrant positions.
The Court has told 45 staff nurses at SKIMS that their services will be regularised from their original hiring date, not from the date of a government order in 2013. These employees, initially hired against migrant vacancies, had contested a government order that had set their regularisation date as 19 March 2013. They argued for regularisation from their initial appointment date in 2003, similar to other contractual employees.
Justice M A Chowdhary cancelled a disputed order and directed the employees to be regularised from the date of their initial appointment as per SRO 255 dated 5 August, 2003. The SKIMS authorities were instructed to provide all related benefits resulting from this retrospective regularisation.
Pointing out a violation of constitutional articles, Justice Chowdhary mentioned that two groups of similarly-placed employees were treated differently, with one group benefiting from regularisation while the petitioners faced discrimination.
The Court found that SKIMS authorities didn’t clarify whether similarly-situated contractual staff nurses engaged against migrant vacancies were not regularised retrospectively. It emphasised that the orders discriminated against the petitioners, denying them equal opportunities in public employment compared to another similarly-situated group.
The judgement considered the disputed orders legally flawed, emphasising the petitioners’ entitlement to regularisation from their initial appointment. The court expressed concern over the intentional delay in regularising the petitioners’ services, causing them undue suffering.
