HC sets aside Hooda government's regularization policy

In an order that could affect hundreds of serving Haryana government employees, the Punjab and Haryana High Court on Thursday set aside the policy of the state's previous Congress government headed by Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda.

The Hooda government had regularized the services of hundreds of employees ahead of the assembly elections in Haryana in October 2014, framing four policies that year to regularize services of adhoc and contractual employees.

While ordering that the regularized employees will not continue after six months (from now), the high court ordered the state government to make regular appointments against these posts.

However, the high court said that the Haryana government should give six months to enable the affected employees to find jobs. It also said that if the affected employees applied afresh for the selection process for recruitment now, they should be given a one-time age relaxation for the period when they worked with the state government.

The high could observed that "the exercise for framing the aforesaid four policies in June and July 2014 was to please voters as the assembly elections were due in October".

--IANS

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