The top court on Friday, exercising its suo moto jurisdiction, restored thousands of government workers, sacked through its earlier Aug 17 judge-ment, which struck down the Sacked Employees (Reinstatement) Ordinance Act 2010.
The Supreme Court, by a majority of 4:1, dismissed review petitions filed against the earlier verdict by declaring that the “impugned legislation, namely, the Sacked Employees (Re-instatement) Act, 2010 is held to be in violation of, inter alia, Articles 25, 18, 9 and 4 of the Constitution of Islamic Republic of Pakistan, 1973 and therefore void under the pro-visions of Article 8”.
However, the majority of the members of the five-judge larger bench, namely Justice Umar Ata Ban-dial, Justice Sajjad Ali Shah, Justice Qazi Muham-mad Amin Ahmed and Justice Aminuddin Khan have restored all government employees by exercis-ing suo motu jurisdiction. The reasons for the ma-jority order will be issued later.
“In exercise of the Court’s jurisdiction under Arti-cle 184(3) of the Constitution read with Article 187, we have taken into consideration the services ren-dered by the reinstated employees of the “employ-ers” [as defined in Section 2(d) of the Act],” the order read
“[We] hereby order that employees who were hold-ing posts that on the date of their initial termination of service (from 01.11.1996 to 12.10.1999) did not require any aptitude or scholastic or skill test, for appointment thereon, shall be restored from the date of the judgement under review to the posts they were holding on the same terms and conditions of service applicable on the date of their termination pursuant to the judgement under review,” it added.
The court also held that other employees, who were holding posts that on the date of their initial termi-nation of service (from November 1, 1996 to Octo-ber 12, 1999) and required the passing of any apti-tude or scholastic or skill test for appointment thereon, would from the date of the judgement un-der review be restored to their posts on the same terms and conditions of service applicable on the date of their initial termination.
