Orissa HC Pulls Up NLUO For Not Following Uniform Service Condition For Employees

Cuttack: The Orissa High Court has pulled up the National Law University of Odisha (NLUO), here, for not having codified service condition, leading to discrimination in appointment of its employees.

The court expressed its displeasure while hearing a petition filed by Sabyasachi Mohanty who was appointed as assistant finance officer by NLUO on contractual basis in October 2016. The university took a decision to regularise about 30 persons who had completed their services unblemished for two years. But Mohanty was deprived of the benefit and his appointment was not extended in October, 2020.

The single judge bench of Justice Biswanath Rath said since the petitioner had completed three years in service with an unblemished record, such a principle should be applicable to him. “It makes it clear that the university in the guise of no permanent service conditions on its own employee, is applying different standards in case of different employees which cannot get approval of law,” TNIE quoted Justice Rath as saying.

“Once you set a principle that should be followed till it is replaced only by a better principle, if any. The attitude of the university in the circumstance makes it clear that it applies different principles in case of different employees, which ought to be prohibited,” he observed.

Stating that the NLUO should have rule and/or regulation to regulate the field of engagement, Justice Rath directed it to treat the petitioner deemed to be continuing in the post of assistant finance officer in his service uninterrupted. He also ordered the university to pay 50 per cent of his last pay drawn towards back wages within one month.