Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Home Secretary appears in court

CHENNAI: State Home Secretary S. Malathi appeared before a Division Bench of the Madras High Court on Friday in connection with writ petitions filed by two part-time Masalchis (temporary peons) in courts seeking a direction to the Tamil Nadu government to pass orders on their representation to regularise their services.

Passing interim orders on the petitions, a Bench, comprising Justices S.J. Mukhopadhaya and V. Dhanapalan, said it had directed the Home Secretary to assist the court in the matter.

Accordingly, the Secretary appeared before the court.

She said if the Registrar-General (RG) made a proposal, the State government may consider it, for which she prayed for six months’ time.

The Bench directed the RG to forward the details of the number of Masalchis required for different courts, within a week. It granted four months’ time to the Tamil Nadu government to take a decision and file a status report before the court.

The Bench said it was expected that the State government would take into consideration the need as shown by the court and sanction the appropriate number of posts of Masalchi for the courts concerned.

The Judges made it clear that when Masalchis posts were sanctioned, the appointing authority would not fill them up by regularising the services of part-time employees, though it would be open for them to fill the post in accordance with law, after calling for candidates from the employment exchange and while looking into the matter, consider the case of the part-time employees already working.

The Bench later posted the matter for November 5.

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