CUTTACK: The Orissa High Court has dismissed a writ appeal challenging a single judge’s 2024 order that directed retrospective regularisation and consequential service benefits for 60-year-old Radha Krisna Dash, a long-serving employee of the Cuttack Municipal Corporation (CMC).
The writ appeal, filed on March 21 this year, questioned the propriety of the judgment dated October 29, 2024, passed in a 2018 petition.
While dismissing the writ appeal, the bench of Chief Justice Harish Tandon and Justice MS Raman ordered authorities to comply with the 2024 judgment within a month. Any delay will attract a penalty of Rs 5,000 per day, recoverable from the salary of the responsible official, the order warned.
In the October 29, 2024 order, the single judge had directed appropriate authorities to effectuate the retrospective regularisation of Dash’s service from 1999 and disburse all consequential benefits to which the petitioner is entitled within a period of three months from the date of the order.
Dash, who had joined as a junior assistant on daily-wage basis on November 1, 1990, continued in that capacity for over 25 years before being absorbed on August 14, 2015. The case records reveal that Dash worked continuously under the municipality, including extensions per office orders in 1992 and enhanced allowances granted in 1996.
Despite a 1996 directive of the director, municipal administration to sponsor applications of irregularly appointed junior assistants, Dash’s name was inexplicably omitted, even as juniors were considered. A selection test later regularised 148 in-service candidates engaged between 1982 and 1992, granting them seniority from their initial engagement through an order dated May 17, 1999.
Advocate Jitendra Kumar Lenka, who represented Dash, submitted although Dash repeatedly approached authorities, no action was taken. A 2015 directive to consider his case in parity with co-employees also failed to yield results.