Govt Can't Deny Dignity After 21 Years Of Service: J&K High Court Upholds Widow's Plea For Husband's Regularisation
The division bench of Justice Shahzad Azeem and Justice Sindhu Sharma was hearing a writ petition challenging the plea by the widow from Doda district.
By ETV Bharat Jammu & Kashmir Team
Published : April 25, 2026 at 7:33 PM IST
Srinagar: The High Court of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh has dismissed a plea by the Union Territory administration and upheld a tribunal order directing posthumous regularisation of a daily wage employee who served for over two decades.
In its five-page judgment, the division bench of Justice Shahzad Azeem and Justice Sindhu Sharma at Jammu said the government could not deny regularisation after extracting more than two decades of uninterrupted service from the employee.
The bench was hearing a writ petition filed by the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir through its Finance and Health and Medical Education departments, along with senior health officials including the Director of Health Services, Jammu, the Chief Medical Officer, Doda, and the Block Medical Officer, Gandoh. The petition challenged a September 30, 2025 order of the Central Administrative Tribunal, Jammu Bench, which had ruled in favour of Sara Begum, a 51-year-old widow from Doda district.
Sara Begum had approached the tribunal seeking justice for her late husband, Mohd Rafi Khan, who worked as a Junior Assistant on an adhoc basis since November 26, 1993, and continued in service until his death on December 14, 2014.
The tribunal had directed the government to regularise his services retrospectively from January 11, 2013, the date when his juniors were regularised, and to release all consequential benefits, including arrears, pension and retiral dues.
"After extracting work from the deceased employee for more than two decades, State cannot now claim that he was merely an adhoc worker," the bench observed, stressing that such long service indicated the permanency of the work performed.
The court noted that Khan's case had already been recommended for regularisation by a statutory empowered committee under the Jammu and Kashmir Civil Services (Special Provisions) Act, 2010. However, his name was excluded when formal orders were issued, even as his juniors, including one Farooq Ahmed Zargar, were regularised.
The judges found no justification for this exclusion and termed it discriminatory. "State being a model employer is expected to act fairly and cannot follow a 'hire and fire' policy," the court said, adding that the denial of regularisation violated the guarantee of equality under Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution.
Rejecting the government's argument that the 2010 Act and subsequent regularisation rules had been repealed, the court held that accrued rights could not be taken away retrospectively.
"A right accrued to the deceased cannot be taken away retrospectively," the bench said, clarifying that the repeal of a law cannot defeat rights that had already crystallised.
"Before concluding, we must record that the respondent is a widow seeking posthumous regularization so that she and her children can live with dignity," the court observed, adding that the State should act with compassion instead of prolonging litigation on technical grounds.
The bench ultimately ruled that the tribunal had taken a "pragmatic view" and found no legal or factual error in its order.
Dismissing the writ petition as "devoid of merit," the court asserted that the deceased employee's services must be regularised from the date his junior was regularised, along with all consequential benefits.
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