The Hindu      26.08.2014 

HC directive to Madurai Corporation

 The Madras High Court Bench here on Monday directed Madurai Corporation to regularise the services of 12 unskilled labourers, who had been maintaining street lights in the city since 1992, without insisting on educational qualifications required for the posts of wiremen and helpers.

Allowing a joint writ petition filed by them in 2009, Justice R. Mahadevan directed the Corporation Commissioner to pass necessary orders within eight weeks. He recorded the submission of the petitioners’ counsel, B. Saravanan, that his clients were ready to forego old monetary benefits.

The judge pointed out that the petitioners had filed a writ petition in the Principal Seat of the High Court in Chennai in 1997 itself seeking regularisation of their services. That case was disposed of in November 2002 with a direction to the State Government to implement a corporation resolution in favour of the petitioners.

However, the direction was not complied with and hence the petitioners filed a contempt of court application in 2004. The application was disposed of by the court in April 2006 with a direction to the corporation to send a proposal afresh and the government to pass appropriate orders on the proposal within eight weeks.

Nevertheless, the petitioners filed another contempt application in 2007 claiming that the 2006 orders were also not implemented by the authorities concerned. That application was closed after recording the government’s submission that necessary instructions had been issued to the corporation.

Thereafter, the corporation on November 27, 2007 appointed the petitioners as unskilled labourers on temporary basis and not as wiremen and helpers since they had studied only up to Class IV, and hence the present writ petition.

Petitioners filed a writ petition in the Principal Seat of the High Court in Chennai in 1997 itself