VIJAYAWADA: In a significant ruling, the Andhra Pradesh High Court has termed the prolonged engagement of employees on temporary, contract, or outsourcing basis without regularisation as ‘labour exploitation’.
The court made it clear that utilising workers for decades on meagre wages, without filling permanent vacancies through a proper recruitment process, is unconstitutional.
A division bench comprising Justice Battu Devanand and Justice Subhendu Samanta observed that the government must act as a model employer and cannot exploit its citizens. The bench criticised the practice of appointing qualified individuals on contract or outsourcing basis for essential and continuous work, instead of filling sanctioned posts on a permanent basis. The bench held that after extracting services for decades, the government cannot deny their rights on such pretexts.
Questioning the authorities, the court asked why these workers were continued for so long if there were no vacancies or need for their services. It emphasised that assigning them duties equivalent to regular employees while keeping them as daily wage workers throughout their lives violates their right to livelihood under Article 21 of the Constitution.
The case pertains to employees working for decades in the VMC and Telugu Ganga Project, whose pleas for regularisation were earlier rejected by the AP Administrative Tribunal in 2018. Setting aside the tribunal’s decision, the court directed the government to regularise the petitioners’ services within two months.