Regularisation of long-serving daily-rated workers may justify relaxed qualifications and phased absorption, but wage parity depends on financial feasibility.

Long continuous service in work of a permanent nature may justify regularisation through a structured absorption scheme, and such a scheme may be approved with phased implementation where financial capacity and available posts require it. The Court also treated long and satisfactory experience as a valid basis to relax rigid educational qualification requirements for eligible workers at the regularisation stage. For workers who remained unabsorbed, however, the wages fixed under the scheme were upheld and immediate grant of the minimum pay scale of regular employees was declined, as pay parity depended on the facts and the institution's financial feasibility.

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Issues: (i) whether the scheme for regularisation and absorption of daily-rated workers required modification and could be approved with directions for phased implementation; (ii) whether the prescribed educational qualifications could be insisted upon rigidly in the case of workers who had rendered long continuous service; and (iii) whether unabsorbed workers were entitled to the minimum pay scale of regular employees or only to the wages fixed under the scheme.

Issue (i): Whether the scheme for regularisation and absorption of daily-rated workers required modification and could be approved with directions for phased implementation.

Analysis: The controversy was confined to the form and fairness of the absorption scheme, since the larger dispute over the claim for permanency had substantially been overtaken by the University's own proposal. The Court held that where continuous work of a permanent nature is taken for long years, the employer cannot keep workers in a perpetual daily-wage status, but the manner of absorption may be structured by a phased scheme having regard to financial capacity and available posts. The scheme was therefore examined for legality and practical fairness, with directions for prompt implementation and further assessment of additional posts.

Conclusion: The scheme was approved subject to modifications, and the directions of the High Court stood modified accordingly.

Issue (ii): Whether the prescribed educational qualifications could be insisted upon rigidly in the case of workers who had rendered long continuous service.

Analysis: The Court held that long and satisfactory experience on the very posts in question was a relevant and sufficient ground to relax the initial qualification requirement. A strict insistence on formal qualifications at the stage of regularisation, after years of continuous service, would unfairly defeat legitimate claims to absorption. The appropriate approach was to treat practical experience as a material factor and not to disqualify such workers solely on the basis of initial entry qualifications.

Conclusion: The qualification condition was required to be relaxed for eligible long-serving workers, and the objection to their regularisation on that ground was rejected.

Issue (iii): Whether unabsorbed workers were entitled to the minimum pay scale of regular employees or only to the wages fixed under the scheme.

Analysis: The Court distinguished between workers who had already been regularised and those who, though long-serving, remained outside regular absorption for the time being. In the facts of the case, the financial position of the institution and the nature of the scheme justified payment of wages as fixed by the scheme rather than immediate grant of the minimum pay scale attached to regular posts. The claim based on equal pay for equal work was not accepted in the form urged by the respondents for the unabsorbed category.

Conclusion: The scheme providing wages fixed by the Government for unabsorbed workers was upheld, and the claim for immediate minimum pay scale was rejected.

Final Conclusion: The appeals were disposed of by upholding the regularisation scheme with modifications, requiring relaxation of qualifications for eligible workers, directing phased absorption and further creation of posts, and sustaining the wage structure for those not yet absorbed.

Ratio Decidendi: Long continuous service in work of a permanent nature can justify regularisation or absorption through a structured scheme, and rigid initial qualifications may be relaxed where practical experience is sufficient, but the grant of pay parity to unabsorbed daily-rated workers depends on the facts of the case and financial feasibility.

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