The Federal Constitutional Court has ruled that retaining employees performing permanent functions on contractual terms for years amounts to economic exploitation and administrative arbitrariness, observing that the issue of regularisation is not confined to service laws alone but is also linked to fundamental constitutional rights, particularly the right to life under Article 9 and equality before law under Article 25.
According to a detailed written judgment approved for reporting, a two-member bench comprising Justice Aamir Farooq and Justice Syed Arshad Hussain Shah dismissed Civil Petition for Leave to Appeal (CPLA) No. 632-P/2018 filed by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government and upheld the Peshawar High Court’s decision regarding the reinstatement and regularisation of two dispensers from the erstwhile Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).
The court observed that the interpretation of the right to life under Article 9 is broad and encompasses the right to employment and livelihood. The judgment stated that engaging employees on contract against permanent posts for extended periods while denying them job security is inconsistent with constitutional requirements.
The court noted that respondents Tanveer Ahmad and another employee had been appointed as dispensers on a contractual basis in the former FATA in 2002 and 2007, respectively. It held that they fell within the scope of the federal government’s 2008 policy decision under which contractual employees in Basic Pay Scales (BPS) 1 to 15 appointed before June 4, 2008, were to be regularised.
The judgment further stated that neither the advertisement nor the appointment letters indicated that the employees had been hired for a specific project. Therefore, termination of their services on the ground that a project had ended lacked legal justification.
The court also held that differential treatment of employees placed in identical circumstances violated the guarantee of equality enshrined in Article 25 of the Constitution.
Emphasising the issue of long-term contractual employment, the court observed that keeping employees on temporary or contractual terms for years and depriving them of the benefits of regularisation was a condemnable practice that had repeatedly been criticised by the superior judiciary in various judgments.
The Federal Constitutional Court concluded that the principle of regularisation is rooted in justice, equality and the protection of fundamental constitutional rights. Finding no merit in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government’s petition, the court rejected the request for leave to appeal.