Ranchi, Nov 27 : The Jharkhand High Court has set aside the dismissal of eight employees of the Bokaro Juvenile Home and directed the state government to reinstate them.

Concluding the hearing on Thursday, Justice Deepak Roshan held that the governmentâ??s termination order was â??not valid in law,â?? noting that the employeesâ?? services had been duly recognised by the administration before they were abruptly removed.

According to the petition, the Bokaro Deputy Commissioner had issued a public advertisement inviting applications for eight posts at the Juvenile Home in 2016. After a formal selection process, the candidates were appointed to their respective positions.

Following their joining, service books were opened for each of them and they were paid salaries and benefits at par with regular government employees -- indicating full administrative acceptance of their employment status.

However, about a year later, the government issued a notice terminating their services, citing that the appointments were supposed to be contractual, but â??due to a departmental mistake,â?? service books had been opened as if they were regular employees.

The employees were subsequently re-engaged as daily wage labourers from January 2018.

Challenging the move, the aggrieved staff approached the High Court in 2017. During the hearing, the state argued that the original appointments were inadvertent, the result of an internal lapse, and therefore the termination was justified once the error was detected.

The petitioners countered that the selection was made through a transparent, advertised, and lawful recruitment process. They further argued that they had already been granted all entitlements of regular employees, and that the administrationâ??s internal mistakes could not be grounds for punishing legally appointed workers.

After reviewing submissions from both sides, the court observed that the government had treated the petitioners as regular employees from the beginning. Opening service books, releasing salaries, and assigning duties all reflected a clear acceptance of their employment. In such circumstances, the court said, reversing their status and terminating them on the pretext of an administrative error was arbitrary and unsustainable.

The High Court accordingly quashed the termination order and directed the government to reinstate all eight employees.

/IANS