15/02/2026
A person becomes eligible to be considered for appointment on regular basis if he has completed three years continuous service which is also the case with the petitioners. There is no doubt that the petitioners were considered for appointment on regular basis soon after they completed three years of service but the department kept their cases under consideration for a considerable period of time on account of bearucratic inertia by which time their contracts had come to expire. The parent department of the petitioners entirely supported the case of the petitioners for being regularized but S&GAD had different views and did not agree with regularization of the petitioners. It goes without saying that the parent department of the petitioners, that is, respondent No.2 ought to have forwarded their cases for regularization on time and within currency of their contractual employment. The petitioners cannot be held responsible for acts of the department and made to suffer on that account.
It is the mandate of sub-section (1) of section 4 of the Act, set out above, that cases of contract employee appointed on the recommendations of PPSC (which is the case for the petitioners as well) shall be submitted to the appointing authority for regularization “without reference to the Commission or the Scrutiny Committee”. Thus, there was no requirement in law to refer the cases of the petitioners to the scrutiny committee set up by respondent No.2 and it should have been sent to the appointing authority for regularization as soon as the period of three years came to an end. The parent department of the petitioners went wrong in law in retaining discretion over the petitioners by referring their cases to the scrutiny committee and thus wasted valuable time in the process of their appointment on regular basis. Be that as it may, the construction of various provisions of the Act clearly brings
W.P. 70730/25
Muhammad Shahid Sharif & 1 other Vs ADDITIONAL CHIEF SECRETARY ETC..
Mr. Justice Shahid Karim
15-01-2026
2026 LHC 1090