In a significant ruling, the Supreme Court has held that ad hoc employees who were appointed without a proper recruitment process—such as public advertisement or interviews—cannot be regularised.
No Shortcut To Permanent Jobs
The Court made it clear that public employment must follow a fair and transparent process.
- If a person is hired without advertisement or competitive selection,
- Their appointment is considered irregular or illegal,
- And such employees cannot later claim permanent status.
The judgment reinforces that government jobs cannot be granted through backdoor entries.
Why The Court Took This Stand
The Supreme Court emphasized that:
- Public jobs must follow equal opportunity principles under the Constitution
- Allowing regularisation without due process would be unfair to other eligible candidates
- It would violate the merit-based recruitment system
In simple terms, the Court is protecting the integrity of government hiring.
Haryana Policy Partly Struck Down
The case involved policies by the Haryana government to regularise ad hoc and contractual employees.
The Court ruled:
- Some earlier policies were valid under limited conditions
- But later policies attempting to regularise employees without proper hiring procedures were arbitrary and illegal
This means blanket regularisation policies will not stand if they bypass recruitment rules.
What About Existing Employees?
The Court provided some relief:
- Employees already working under such policies may not be immediately removed
- But this does not mean they get permanent status automatically
So, continuation of service and regularisation are treated separately.
Key Legal Principle Reaffirmed
The judgment builds on the landmark Uma Devi case (2006), which stated:
- Regularisation is only allowed in rare, one-time situations
- It cannot become a routine method to bypass recruitment rules
Why This Matters
This ruling has wide implications:
- Governments cannot regularise employees hired without due process
- Contractual and ad hoc workers cannot assume automatic job security
- Recruitment must remain transparent, competitive, and merit-based
Final Take
The Supreme Court has drawn a clear line:
You cannot convert an irregular appointment into a permanent job.
For lakhs of contractual and ad hoc workers, this means future job security will depend not on tenure—but on proper recruitment through legal channels.
