Chandigarh: The temporary and contractual workforce of the Pepsu Road Transport Corporation (PRTC) and Punjab Roadways faced a major setback today after the Punjab and Haryana High Court issued an interim stay on an earlier ruling that ordered their regularisation. A division bench of the high court put the brakes on the relief package that had promised permanent jobs to thousands of contractual drivers, conductors, and workshop staff within the state public transit network. The court has directed all parties to maintain a status quo regarding the employment terms of these casual workers until the next major hearing scheduled for late August.
This ruling comes in response to an appeal filed by the management of the Pepsu Road Transport Corporation, which challenged a decisive order passed by a single-judge bench on April 22. In that initial verdict, the single bench had accepted the petitions of the temporary workers, severely criticising the state transport bodies for extracting perennial, full-time duties from contractual employees for years without offering them structural job security. The single-judge bench had mandated PRTC to formalise these appointments within a strict six-week window, stipulating that a failure to do so would result in the automatic regularisation of the workers.
Appealing the aggressive timeline and financial implications of the order, counsel representing the public transport corporation argued that direct regularisation bypassing established administrative channels and departmental protocols would disrupt the state transport framework. Upon evaluating the corporate appeal, the division bench issued a formal notice to the employee unions and halted the implementation of the single-bench order. The high court further clarified that the matter has now been grouped with parallel ongoing litigations concerning public sector contract workers to ensure a unified judicial standard.
The interim stay has triggered widespread anxiety among thousands of daily-wage and contractual transit workers across Punjab who have been protesting for years under the banner of various transport unions. These employees, many of whom have logged over a decade of continuous service on precarious short-term contracts, have long argued that they perform identical duties and handle identical operational risks as their regular counterparts while receiving a fraction of the benefits. While the status quo order guarantees that these employees cannot be abruptly dismissed from their current roles, the temporary suspension of their path to permanent employment pushes the definitive resolution of their labor rights deeper into the year.
