The petitioners were admittedly appointed as Octroi Moharrir with Town Committee, District Rahim Yar Khan, however, through Letter No/SO-IV(LG)2-179/9 dated 02.08.1999 Zila Tax and Octori was abolished, resultantly its staff became surplus and absorbed as Secretary and Junior Clerks. At a later point of time, the Resident Assistant Director (audit), Rahim Yar Khan vide letter dated 13.4.2002 pointed out certain irregularities in their appointments therefore, the Respondent No, 3 referred the matter to the Respondent No, 1 for relaxation about the appointments of the employees of the Town Committee and now through the impugned Letter No, SO-Admin-II(LG) 9- 32/2004/CM dated 21.3.2005, the Government of the Punjab, Local Government & Rural Development Department has refused to regularize the services of the petitioners.
2. The contention of learned counsel for the petitioners is that they were performing duties, since 1988 without any adverse complaint against them; that petitioner did hold the requisite qualification and that their appointment as temporary employees was an illegality on the part of the department itself for which the petitioners could not be penalized.
3. Report and parawise comments have been received and are available on the file,
4. Arguments considered. Record perused.
5. As shall be seen from the contents of this petition and also argued by the learned counsel, the appointments of the petitioners were made on temporary basis. Furthermore, there is a clear stance of the respondents department that before making even temporary appointments of the petitioner the codal formalities were not observed which include proper advertisement. To rebut the above stance, neither any rejoinder has been filed to the reply nor even any document has been tendered to refute the above assertion of the respondent department. There is no cavil to the proposition that even the Hon'ble Supreme Court of Pakistan in number of reported cases has held that any recruitment, whether ad-hoc or regular, without proper publication/advertisement, is violative of fundamental rights. Reliance is placed on 'Amer Mehmood versus Vice-Chancellor, University of Agriculture Faisalabad and 3 others" (PLJ 2002 Lahore 1811), 'Munawar Khan versus Niaz Muhammad and 7 others" (1993 SCM R 1287) and Abdul Jabbar Mamon's case (1996 SCM R 1349). In these circumstances, I find no illegality having been committed by the respondent department to refuse regularization of services of the petitioners through the impugned notification dated 21.3.2005 being violative of fundamental rights. This petition; therefore, fails and is accordingly dismissed.