Agriculture Department: KP government asked to reinstate contractual employees

Announcing its reserved judgement in response to an appeal of various project employees of agriculture department of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) on Monday, the apex court ruled that no government can adopt cherry picking policy to regularise employees against certain projects. A five-member bench led by the Chief Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali had reserved the verdict in the matter on 24th February 2016 in response to appeals filed against Peshawar High Court judgement by a number of employees of various projects of the KP agriculture department.
They had urged the top court to decide questions of law including whether the aggrieved employees of various projects are governed by the provisions of the KP Employees (Regularisation of Services) Act, 2009. The court observed through the verdict that Section 3 of the Act clearly provides for regularisation of the employees appointed either on contract basis or adhoc basis and were holding contract appointments on December 31, 2008 or till the commencement of this Act.
Justice Amir Hani Muslim while authoring the verdict in the matter noted that the respondents were appointed on one year contract basis, which was extended from time to time and were holding their respective posts on the cut-of date provided in Section 3 (December 31, 2008).
The verdict ruled that it is also an admitted fact that the respondents were appointed on contract basis against project posts but the projects were funded by the KP government by allocating regular provincial budget prior to the promulgation of the Act. "Almost all the projects were brought under the regular Provincial Budget Schemes by the KP government and summaries were approved by the KP Chief Minister for operating the projects on permanent basis," the judgement said.
The verdict added, "On Farm Water Management Project" was brought on the regular side in 2006 and the project was declared as an attached department of the Food, Agriculture, Livestock and Co-operative Department. Likewise, other projects were also brought under the regular Provincial Budget Scheme. Therefore, services of the respondents would not be affected by the language of Section 2(aa) and (b) of the Act, which could only be attracted if the projects were abolished on the completion of their prescribed tenure".