- (1.) THE common issue raised in all these cases is the constitutional validity of the Rajasthan Regulation of Appointments to Public Services Rationalisation of Staff Act, 1999 (hereinafter called Act of 1999). Various provisions of the Act more particularly Ss. 2(v), 9, 11 and 19 of the Act are being assailed as ultra vires. Consequent relief has been asked in each petition, as we shall notice later on, to quash the directions issued and order passed in pursuance there of under the provisions of Act of 1999. Brief View of Impugned Provisions
(2.) AS per its preamble, the Rajasthan State Legislature enacted the Rajasthan (Regulation of Appointments to Public Services and Rationalisation of Staff) Act, 1999 (hereinafter called, `the Act of 1999') to regulate appointments in the public service and prohibit irregular appointments in offices and establishments under the control of the State Government, local authorities, public corporations and Universities etc. In brief, the scheme of the Act is that all services in any office established under the State Government, local authorities, a Govt. company or undertaking wholly owned or controlled by the State Govt., a body established under any law made by the legislature of the State whether incorporated or not, including a University and any other body established by the State Government or a society registered under any law relating to the registration of societies for the time being in force and receiving funds from the State Government either fully or partly for its maintenance, or any educational institution whether registered or not but receiving aid from the State Government have been treated as `Public Service' for the purposes of the Act of 1999. Providing this enlarged definition of `public service' under Sec. 2(v), the Act defined `Daily Wage employee' under Sec. 2(ii) and considered all appointments other than of those who are selected and appointed on a sanctioned post in accordance with the relevant rules on a regular basis to be `daily wage employees' for the purposes of the Act. With these premise, under Sec. 4(1) the Act prohibits appointment of any person in any public service to any post, in any class, category or grade as `a daily wage employee'. However, it made an exception under sub-sec. (2) of Sec. 4 by making a provision that no urgent temporary appointment shall be made in any public service to any post, in any class, category or grade except with the prior permission of the competent authority and such appointments shall have to be consistent with such conditions as may be imposed by such competent authority. The competent authority was authorised to lay down the conditions under which alone any urgent temporary appointments could be made. Under Sec. 5, creation of any post in any office or establishment relating to public service was made subject to the previous sanction of the competent authority and appointments made on a post created without the previous sanction of the competent authority was declared to be invalid under Sec. 5(2) of the Act. Such appointments were subjected to the restrictions/prohibitions contained in Secs. 8,9 & 15 of the Act of 1999. Sec. 8 inter-alia provides that the Treasury Officer/Sub Treasury Officer or Accounts Officer or any other officer or authority who is charged with the responsibility of passing the salary bill shall not pass such first bill of any person appointed to public service in violation of Sec. 7 or Sec. 4(2) of the Act of 1999.
(3.) AS noticed above, sub-sec. (2) of Sec. 4 ordains that urgent temporary appointment in any public service henceforth shall be made only with the prior permission of the competent authority and subject to conditions imposed by him. Sec. 7 is captioned as "Regulation of recruitment". Recruitments have been categorised into three classes. Thus, providing for creation of new posts subject to the sanction of competent authority and urgent temporary appointments also having been made subject to the previous sanction of the competent authority and classifying the permissible recruitments, imposed the sanction against the appointments made in contravention of Secs. 4 & 7 as well as prohibiting regularisation of the employees defined as Daily Wage Employees in a public service as defined under Sec. 2(ii) and (v) of the Act under Sec. 9. The Act also envisaged termination of employees defined as Daily Wage employees. Sec. 10 named a large number of Authorities, authorising them to issue direction in terms of the provisions of the Act to their respective subordinates and non-compliance to that direction was made an actionable misconduct. ;