S.R.Singh, J. - (1.) Petitioners, who found their access of the service of Corporation as Conductors on contractual basis and who are being paid wages at the rate of 35 paise per (earned) kilometres as and when they are temporarily engaged for a specified period of one year and which period is liable to be extended, have instituted this phalanx of the writ petitions for the reliefs that the respondents be directed to assimilate the petitioners in the service of the Corporation as regular conductors and pay them the salary and other emoluments in parity with the regularly appointed conductors under the Corporation and further not to terminate their services in virtue of the conditions envisaged in the contract and also the respondents be directed to abolish the practice of contract appointment. Since all the petitioners are knit together by similar facet of controversy being based on identical facts, they are amenable to disposal by a composite order and they were taken up with the consent of the Counsel for the parties for disposal accordingly.
(2.) I have heard Sri K.N. Misra for the petitioner and Sri Sameer Sharma for the respondents. The Counsel appearing for the petitioners canvassed that the petitioners were subjected to hostile discrimination inasmuch as apprentice trainees belonging to scheduled caste were pronounced selected for regular appointment to the exclusion of the petitioners who it has been alleged, have been invidiously singled out for not being the member of Scheduled Caste; that the work for which the petitioners have been engaged are of perennial nature and as such their engagement on contract basis for stipulated periods is arbitrary, unjust, unfair and infringes upon Article 14 of the Constitution; that the method of contract appointment is tantamount to unfair labour practice and verges on exploitation by capitalising on their plight of being unemployed and too poor and too insignificant to matter, that the contract appointment is liable to be abolished qua the ratio decidendi flowing from the decision of the Apex Court in the Secretary Haryana State 'Electricity Board v. Suresh and Ors., (1990) 2 UPLBEC 1186. The learned Counsel for the respondents, in opposition, contended inter alia that the U.P. State Road Transport Corporation is striving to provide adequate economical and properly coordinated transport service to the travelling public of the State and with that end in view, it took a policy decision to engage trained apprentices and retired army men etc. to work as conductors purely on contractual basis on a remuneration of 35 p. per (earned) Kilometers in the crucible of sudden shortage of regular conductors so that the transport services do not suffer for want of regular conductors; that the Corporation has been running into huge losses owing to which it could not replace its old and unserviceable buses and hence it started taking private buses on hire for plying under its own supervision and since the hired buses are taken purely on contractual basis, it was decided to engage conductors on contract basis; that the remuneration payable to the petitioners under the contract at the rate of 35 paise per (earned) Kilometers was pegged by the Corporation taking into consideration that their wages may not fall short of what is being paid to regular conductors i.e. Rs, 3050/- per month; that the petitioners having been directly engaged by the Corporation purely on contractual basis and there being no intermediary involved in such appointments, the decision of the Apex Court in Secretary Haryana State Electricity Board (supra) is not intended for application to the present case and that the petitioners are not entitled to claim rcgularisation cle hors the rules.
(3.) I have bestowed my anxious considerations to the submissions made across the bar. From the interim order passed by the Court, it would appear that impression was sought to be given to the Court that the respondents had taken recourse to contract labour system which was liable to be abolished as per Section 10 of the Contract Labour Regulation and Abolition Act, 1970 and it was as a sequel to this argument that the Court reckoning into consideration the decision of the Apex Court in Secretary Haryana State Electricity Board (supra) was persuaded into passing the interim orders that "until further orders by the Court, the respondents should continue the petitioners in service as conductors and pay them minimum pay scale which was applicable in the State of Uttar Pradesh." The decision of the Apex Court in Secretary Haryana State Electricity Board (supra) is unavailing to the present case inasmuch as, no intermediary was interposed between the petitioners and the Corporation inasmuch as no intermediary came to be interposed between the petitioners and the Corporation. The contract of employment in the instant case was directly between the petitioners individually and the respondent Corporation. As such, neither the provisions of the Contract Labour Regulation and Abolition Act, 1970, nor the decision aforestated are attracted for application. Since the petitioners were considered for regular appointment in accordance with law, they cannot be heard to say that they were denied regularisation arbitrarily by the Corporation in contravention of the directions issued by the Supreme Court in U.P. State Road Transport Corporation v. U.P. Parivahan Nigam Sishuksh Berozgar Sangh, JT 1995(2) SC 26. The decision aforestated has been subsequently improved upon the by Apex Court itself that Section 22 of the Apprentice Act does not confer a right upon the apprentices to claim absorption/regularisation as of right. The apprentices, according to the directions embodied by the Apex Court, are only entitled to certain relaxations and they were not at all entitle to claim regularisation without facing recruitment test.;