Raj HC orders posthumous regularization of Jodhpur postal sweeper, directs pension to widow within three months

Jodhpur: The Rajasthan High Court has ordered the posthumous regularization of a postal sweeper who served the Department of Posts at Jodhpur for over 35 years. A division bench of Justice Pushpendra Singh Bhati and Justice Sandeep Shah allowed the writ on 29 April 2026. Sunny’s services have been treated as regularized on the post of Multi-Tasking Staff (MTS, Group-C) from 25 July 2011. All consequential and pensionary benefits must be paid to his widow within three months.

Sunny joined the Sub Post Office at Shastri Nagar, Jodhpur, on 3 September 1984 as a part-time casual sweeper. His salary came out of a contingency fund. It started at Rs 27 a day and rose over the decades to Rs 11,076 a month by October 2015. He filed representations seeking parity and regularization in 1990, 1995, 2000, 2015 and 2017. None was decided. He continued sweeping the same office until his death on 24 January 2020.

His widow Smt. Kusum was brought on record as legal representative and pursued his O.A. No. 71/2019 before the CAT, Jodhpur. The CAT dismissed the case in September 2019 on delay. The High Court set aside that order in November 2022, holding that the claim involved a “continuous cause of action”. On remand, the CAT dismissed the case again on 30 July 2024, this time distinguishing Sunny’s case from a parallel case of another postal sweeper, Vijesh Kumar.

Vijesh Kumar was a sweeper at the Kacheri Post Office in Jodhpur, who had joined in 1983 — a year before Sunny. He had won full-time status before the CAT in 2006 and was regularized as MTS (Group-C) by departmental order dated 22 March 2011. Sunny’s case sought parity with that order.

Counsel Satya Prakash Sharma and Abhimanyu Khatri argued that Sunny had served continuously for 35 years on a permanent post, doing the work of a regular sweeper. The Department had never disputed the 1984 joining year in its CAT reply. The “1999 joining” theory was raised for the first time in the High Court. The “minor at joining” objection, raised because Sunny was 15 in 1984, had already been rejected in Vijesh Kumar’s case and could not be turned against Sunny. Counsel relied on State of Punjab v. Jagjit Singh, (2017) 1 SCC 148, Jaggo v. Union of India, 2024 SCC OnLine SC 3826, Bhola Nath v. State of Jharkhand, 2026 SCC OnLine SC 129, and Dharam Singh v. State of U.P., 2025 SCC OnLine SC 1735.

Mr. Vaibhav Bhansali, appearing for Senior Central Government Standing Counsel B.P. Bohra, defended the dismissal. He submitted that Sunny was actually engaged from 1999 and not 1984. His payment came out of a contingency fund. There was no sanctioned post. The 1991 Casual Labour Scheme had a cut-off of 7 June 1988, which Sunny did not meet. Sunny had been a minor at joining, making any contract void. And the cause of action, the State urged, ceased on his death.

The bench rejected each argument. The records, including representations from 1990, 1995, 2000, 2015 and 2017, established that Sunny had pursued his rights for decades — not, as the Tribunal had suggested, only from 2019. Sunny and Vijesh Kumar had joined the same Department, in the same city, in adjacent years, doing identical work. The Court held that the principle of parity could not be diluted simply because Sunny had not approached the Tribunal as quickly as Vijesh Kumar.

The judges then turned to the larger question of regularization. They relied heavily on the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Jaggo v. Union of India. That judgment warned that Secretary, State of Karnataka v. Uma Devi, (2006) 4 SCC 1 was being misapplied to deny regularization to long-serving workers in irregular — but not illegal — appointments. Government departments, the Supreme Court had held, must lead by example as model employers and cannot use “temporary” labels to extract permanent labour without responsibility.

The bench then echoed the Supreme Court’s lion-lamb framing in Bhola Nath. “Where a lion contracts with a lamb, the inequality is not incidental but structural,” the Court there observed. This meant the State, as a vastly more powerful contracting party, cannot rely on contractual labels to defeat fundamental rights under Article 14. Such fundamental rights, the Supreme Court had held in Basheshar Nath v. CIT, AIR 1959 SC 149, are incapable of waiver.

Applied to Sunny, this meant that paying him from a contingency fund did not magically convert a permanent need into a temporary one. The work of sweeping the post office was perennial. No one else was doing it. A permanent sanctioned post could be inferred from the facts. On the death of Sunny, the right to sue survived in favour of his widow, since the relief was monetary and the cause of action was continuous.

The High Court allowed the writ petition. The CAT order dated 30 July 2024 was quashed. Sunny’s services stand regularized on the post of MTS (Group-C) with effect from 25 July 2011 — the same date from which Vijesh Kumar received the benefit. All consequential benefits, including pensionary benefits if applicable, must be paid by the Department of Posts to the legal representatives of the deceased within three months. No order as to costs.

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