ISLAMABAD: The Sup­reme Court on Wednesday rejected the Peshawar High Court registrar’s reply in a case relating to terms and conditions of service of contract employees in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Wor­kers Welfare Board (WWB).

A three-judge SC bench headed by Chief Justice Gulzar Ahmed, however, directed the PHC not to take up the matter till a final decision on the issue by the apex court.

The Supreme Court is seized with an appeal moved on behalf of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa WWB chairman against the Feb 17 rejection by PHC Chief Justice Waqar Ahmed Seth of a request for constituting a larger bench to hear the case relating to regularisation or reinstatement of an employee from Swabi who was working as a teacher at Folks Grammar School.

At the last hearing on April 10, the Supreme Court had sought a reply and asked the PHC registrar to appear before it.

In response, PHC registrar Khawaja Wajih-ud-Din, through a three-page reply, contended that Bench No.1 of the high court, presided over by the PHC chief justice, had turned down the request for constituting the larger bench on the grounds that there was no need for a larger bench after the issuance of a judgement by the Supreme Court in the Naimatullah versus Workers Welfare Board.

Even otherwise, the reply said, the larger benches were constituted when there was a difference of opinion on the same question of law between two different benches of the same court. Thus no larger bench could be constituted when the Supreme Court had already rendered a judgement on an issue, it added.

The reply reminded that the basic judgement in reference to the WWB employees was the 2016 Naimatullah versus WWB Governing Body chairman and not that of 2018 in which it was held that rules of the board were statutory in nature and as such writ petitions under Article 199 of the Constitution were maintainable.

“After this judgement, there is not even a single judgement where this judgement has been discussed or overruled,” the reply said, adding that indeed there were two or three judgements of the apex court wherein without discussing this aspect of the case, it was held (2018 verdict) that contractual employees of a statutory body could not ask for regularisation or reinstatement through the high court after termination of the contractual obligations.

The reply recalled that after the 2016 judgement, the matter was remanded back to the PHC for deciding all the petitions in which the high court had on the analogy of discrimination accepted the plea for regularisation. The judgement was then challenged in the apex court by the WWB and the Supreme Court had through its 2019 verdict accepted the right of regularisation of the services of employees before the high court.

The reply stated that the PHC would stop at nothing to honour and implement every judgement and order of the Supreme Court and had no cajoles or cavil if the apex court fixed the matter for decision before any other bench of the PHC or for that matter even before a larger bench.

Not satisfied with the reply, the Supreme Court, however, ordered fixing all appeals filed before it against the PHC orders, saying the high court was ignoring the earlier decisions of the apex court and adjourned the matter without announcing a specific date.

Earlier, Advocate Khawaja Azhar Rasheed informed the apex court that the PHC had rendered a number of judgements which sometimes followed the Naimatullah case while on numerous occasions, the same had been ignored.

The counsel contended that through his earlier application before the high court, he had only prayed for constitution of a larger bench so that this controversy could be resolved once and for all, but PHC chief justice had dismissed the plea with an observation that the high court had rendered identical views and as such there was no need for constitution of a larger bench.

The appeal contended that the high court order would result in multiplication of litigation on a settled point of law, since conflicting judgements were being rendered everyday on the question that contract employees could not be regularised in constitutional jurisdiction of the high court.

Published in Dawn, April 16th, 2020