The court held that contractual service cannot be included within the definition of public official
Police officers walk past Pakistan’s Supreme Court building, in Islamabad, Pakistan, April 6, 2022. REUTERS
ISLAMABAD:
The Supreme Court has ruled that service performed on a contractual basis cannot be counted as regular government service for promotion, holding that to do so would amount to a misinterpretation of the law and would effectively confer the status of a public servant from the very beginning of employment.
The 16-page judgment was written by Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar.
The court held that contractual service cannot be included within the definition of public servant and therefore cannot be counted along with regular service towards meeting the prescribed length of service required for promotion.
He further argued that treating the outsourced service as regular service would effectively grant the outsourced employees the status of civil servants from the first day of their appointment.
The SC said such an interpretation would render ineffective the exclusion clauses of both the federal and provincial Public Servants Acts, which specifically exclude contract employees from the definition of public servant.
The ruling stated that the true meaning and scope of the expression “government service” cannot be interpreted beyond the framework of the Public Servants Acts.
Referring to the Sindh Civil Servants Rules, 1975, the court observed that Rule 10 clearly states that the seniority of a public servant is determined from the date of his regular appointment.
The court also held that as per the Sindh Civil Servants Rules, no appointment can be regularized retrospectively from a remote past date. The ruling came in an appeal filed by Muhammad Saleem Sheikh against a decision of the Sindh Service Court.
The petitioner, an employee of WAPDA, requested that his contractual service period also be counted towards promotion. The Sindh Service Court had earlier dismissed his plea seeking to include contractual service in the qualification period for promotion.
