The Rajasthan High Court has ordered the state government to give the minimum pay scale to two workers hired through placement agencies.
A placement agency is a company that supplies workers to an organisation.
The two workers are Sunil Katara and Anil Kumar Pargi, both from Banswara.
Katara works as a peon at an Eklavya Model Residential School in Kushalgarh.
Pargi works as a watchman at the Tribal Area Development Department office in Banswara.
Both posts are Class IV jobs, which is the lowest grade of government staff.
The minimum pay scale is the lowest salary level set for such a post.
Key points
- The Rajasthan High Court ordered the minimum pay scale for two agency-hired Class IV workers.
- The workers said their duties were similar to those of regularly recruited staff.
- The court said the working relationship mattered more than the hiring route.
- The state has 60 days to implement the order after receiving a certified copy.
Why did the state argue against the pay?
The state department said the two workers were not entitled to the pay scale.
Its reason was that they did not enter service through the regular recruitment process.
The High Court did not accept this reasoning in the circumstances before it.
The department did not dispute that the workers were working for it.
The court treated this as an employer and employee relationship.
What did the court say about the hiring route?
The order focuses on the actual work and the relationship described before the court.
It does not look only at the contract label attached to the workers.
The court also relied on its own earlier decision.
On April 8, 2026, it had directed the government to grant the minimum pay scale to a similarly placed employee, even though that person was appointed through an agency.
The ruling is not a general direction for all agency-hired workers.
It applies to the two petitioners and to the Class IV posts they perform.
What happens next for the two workers?
The state government must now act on the order.
It has 60 days from receiving a certified copy of the order to implement the direction for the two petitioners.
Graphic: News Anek, from the facts in this report
Explainer
What happened before
- On April 8, 2026, the High Court directed the government to grant the minimum pay scale to a similarly placed employee appointed through a placement agency.
- The state department argued that the two petitioners were not entitled to the pay scale because they did not come through regular recruitment.
Why it matters
The order shows that the work done and the working relationship can matter more than the route of hiring in a pay dispute.
What to watch next
- The state government has 60 days from receiving a certified copy of the order to implement it for the two petitioners.
