Gurugram: In a judgement that weaves constitutional law with the moral vocabulary of “Rajdharma”, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has directed Haryana government to regularise the services of 41 daily wage workers, some with over three decades of uninterrupted service, holding that a welfare state cannot invoke procedural technicalities to deny dignity to those who have sustained its functioning.
Disposing of a batch of petitions on 31 December, Justice Sandeep Moudgil went beyond the binaries of “legal versus illegal” appointments to ask a harder question: What does fairness require of a government that has consumed decades of labour from its most vulnerable employees, only to disown them by constantly relabelling their status as “contractual”, “daily wage”, or “project staff”?
The petitioners, ranging from tube-well operators to Class-IV employees, had been engaged by various Haryana government departments since the mid-1990s.
The 51-page order, delivered on the last day of 2025, is as much a legal roadmap as it is a moral reckoning.
Citing the Bhagavad Gita’s concept of lokasangraha, the duty of public power to serve social stability and the common good, Justice Moudgil observed, “Governance is not merely about outputs; it is also about how those outputs are produced.”
Drawing from the civilisational idea of nyaya (justice) and anrishamsya (non-cruelty), the court held that the state’s foremost obligation is protection and fairness to those who sustain its functions, not administrative convenience dressed up as policy.
“Our ancient texts repeatedly place upon the sovereign an obligation to act with nyaya (justice), anrishamsya (non-cruelty), and balanced governance and the idea of lokasangraha as discussed in the Bhagavad Gita’s reminds public power that action must serve social stability and the common good, not merely administrative convenience,” Justice Moudgil said in his order.
“They are interpretive lamps that illuminate why a welfare State cannot, in good conscience or good law, keep citizens in endless precarity while taking uninterrupted benefit of their service. When the State engages people to serve the public, often in the lowest rungs, with the least bargaining power, it must remember that governance is not merely about outputs, but it is also about how those outputs are produced,” he added.
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Haryana govt’s objections
Despite the existence of multiple regularisation policies—issued in 1993, 1996, 2003 and 2014—and despite similarly situated colleagues being regularised, their cases were neither considered nor decided.
The state’s defence rested on familiar refrains: No sanctioned posts, lack of educational qualifications, intermittent service records, and the Supreme Court’s 2006 ruling in the State of Karnataka vs Uma Devi case, which bars backdoor regularisation of illegally appointed employees.
Justice Moudgil systematically dismantled each objection. On sanctioned posts, he cited the Supreme Court’s observation in the 2016 Nihal Singh vs State of Punjab case that “sanctioned posts do not fall from heaven”, they are created by conscious administrative decision, and failure to either create posts or stop extracting work is itself an arbitrary state action.
On Uma Devi, the judge clarified that the Constitution Bench judgement was never intended as “a licence for exploitation”, but rather sought to distinguish between “illegal” and “irregular” appointments.
Where duly qualified persons have worked for a decade or more in perennial roles, the state is duty-bound to undertake a one-time regularisation exercise, not as bureaucratic ritual, but as constitutional housekeeping.
The court took particular aim at what it called the state’s “common administrative stratagem”, denying not just regularisation but even consideration, by perpetually changing employment labels, while the work remains permanent.
“The Constitution looks past nomenclature,” Justice Moudgil wrote, “and asks the harder question: What is the true character of the engagement, and what does fairness require of a welfare State that has enjoyed the benefit of such service for a considerably long period?”
Rejecting the state’s plea of delay and laches, as some petitions were filed years after eligibility, the court held that once a regularisation policy is notified, the cause of action is continuous, and the state cannot profit from its own inaction.
“The state, being a model employer, is expected to act as a parent towards its employees, especially where they belong to an illiterate class and the lowest strata of society,” the order read, adding that technical objections cannot defeat substantive rights that ought to have been considered transparently.
In its operative directions, the court ordered regularisation of all petitioners under the policy in force when they first became eligible, with full arrears and six percent annual interest from the date benefits became due.
For those who were not covered by earlier policies but have rendered over 10 years of service on 31 December 2025, regularisation was mandated as a one-time measure. The entire exercise must be completed within eight weeks.