Karnataka high court
Bengaluru: The state cannot employ workers on daily wages for the greater part of their working lives and deny them the security of regular employment, Karnataka high court has observed, while directing the regularisation of a 64-year-old woman who served Dandeli municipality for 34 years. Geeta Ramappa Terdal, a scheduled caste woman from Dandeli in Uttara Kannada district , joined the municipality as a typist in 1988. After completing 24 years of service, she sought regularisation in 2012, claiming parity with other similarly placed employees. However, she retired in 2022 without her services being regularised, prompting her to approach the high court.
“The state must not become an exemplar of the very exploitation which the Constitution commands it to prevent,” the court observed, adding that constitutional governance demanded fairness in administrative action rather than merely compliance with judicial directions after litigation. The court said the authorities must ensure that such instances do not recur, emphasising that employees should not be forced to approach the judiciary to secure their legitimate service benefits after decades of work.
The bench directed the authorities to regularise her services in the cadre in which she was working when she attained the age of superannuation, with effect from Feb 11, 1998, the date on which she completed 10 years of service. Because she had already retired, in 2025, a single-judge bench dismissed her petition on the grounds that her services could not be regularised. The court further ordered that she be granted all consequential benefits arising from regularisation, including notional continuity of regular service for pay fixation and other admissible service benefits.