J&K's Daily Wagers Wait Endlessly for Regularisation

Unrest over wages and working conditions in NOIDA, Uttar Pradesh, recently drew national attention. But another workforce, in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), whose struggle has stretched not for days or months, but for decades, has gone unnoticed. Nearly one lakh daily wagers are currently working in the erstwhile state, many of whom have remained temporary workers for two to three decades.

According to official data presented in the J&K Assembly, 1,00,501 casual, daily rated and other workers have been registered across different departments in the Union Territory, through Aadhaar-based biometric identification and skill profiling.

Of the total temporary workforce, 57,390 workers belong to the Kashmir division, while 40,077 are from the Jammu division. The highest number of such workers are engaged in the Public Health Engineering (PHE) and Irrigation and Flood Control (now Jal Shakti) sector, which employ 38,585 workers, followed by the Power Development Department with 13,616, the Education Department with 12,646, the Forest Department with 8,317 and the Public Works Department with 6,801 workers.

Over the years, some sections of these workers, recruited under Statutory Regulatory Order (SRO) 64, were regularised. This order provided a mechanism to regularise daily-rated and work-charged employees engaged before April 1, 1994. However, thousands of workers remained outside this process, and are still a temporary workforce. Their struggle has been long, slow and remains unresolved.

In J&K departments, these workers are the invisible machinery that keeps the system running. They ensure water supply reaches households, they maintain pipelines, they repair infrastructure, often in difficult terrains and under harsh conditions. During the years of militancy, when normal life was deeply disrupted, they continued to work. They did not stop during the COVID-19 pandemic, when movement was restricted and fear was widespread.

And yet, their status is still of a temporary workforce, with no job security, no pension, no structured pay, no social protections. Most earn between eight to ten thousand rupees a month, an amount that barely sustains a household.

The Bill that came and disappeared

In April 2025, it seemed possible that this long unresolved issue might finally be addressed. Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha approved the introduction of the J&K Civil Services (Special Provisions for Regularisation of Adhoc, Daily Wagers, Need-Based and Other Temporary Workers) Bill, 2025. It held out the hope of a legal pathway towards regularisation for thousands of temporary workers across the Union Territory.

For many daily wagers, it felt like justice after years of silence. But that moment slipped away almost immediately. On the final day of the Budget session, the Assembly was adjourned. The Bill was never discussed. What could have been a turning point was reduced to a footnote. A year has passed since then, and the story has not moved forward in any meaningful way.

On March 11, 2025, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah constituted a six-member high-level committee headed by the chief secretary to examine the issues, including assessing the number of workers involved and the financial implications of their regularisation. The committee, set up through the General Administration Department (GAD), was given six months to review the issue and prepare a roadmap before the next Budget Session. Its report is still awaited.

In recent months, the Abdullah government has given repeated assurances that it will begin the phased regularisation of daily wagers in 2026, in a legally and financially sustained manner. But there is no comprehensive policy yet, no clear timeline, no defined criteria for who will be regularised and how.

Regularising a large workforce, it is argued, would place a significant burden on the exchequer. Salaries, pensions and benefits would require sustained financial commitment. But the present and previous government’s hesitation was not rooted in administrative or financial concerns alone. The Supreme Court’s 2006 judgment in Secretary, State of Karnataka vs Umadevi held that while public employment must follow constitutional recruitment procedures, temporary workers could not claim regularisation as a matter of right.

The ruling significantly restricted blanket regularisation across the country, though there was room for regularising workers who had spent long years in service. Subsequent rulings, including State of Karnataka vs M.L. Kesari, clarified that governments could still consider regularisation for employees who had completed 10 years or more in service and were working against sanctioned posts, as a one-time measure. Over the years, several states like Haryana, continued to explore phased regularisation policies.

Yet, governments across India continue to depend heavily on contractual, ad-hoc and daily-wage workers, even in essential public services, even as political parties routinely promise permanent government jobs during elections. This has raised the question whether the continued reliance on temporary workers is only due to legal and financial constraints, or also a conscious policy choice that allows governments to avoid long-term responsibilities.

Early frameworks for regularisation in J&K

In J&K, many employment and service matters were historically governed through SROs, executive legal instruments used to frame recruitment, pay and administrative service rules. After the constitutional reorganisation in 2019, many older employment disputes continued to be referenced through SROs. However, the situation is markedly different for newer hires.

Also read: J&K Admin Orders Employees to Stay Away from Strikes, Warns of 'Strict Disciplinary Action'

For example, the SRO 520 was introduced in 2017 to deal with casual and other workers’ regular engagement rules by the Mehbooba Mufti government. It was withdrawn following the reading down of Article 370, with the administration stating that it would be replaced by a more comprehensive framework.

On May 13, 2026, the J&K High Court dismissed petitions filed by seasonal labourers employed by the irrigation department since 1998 (older employees), who sought regularisation under SRO 520. While the government argued in court that the petitioners were engaged only on seasonal and need basis and did not fulfil the eligibility criteria prescribed under the 2017 SRO, the court observed that regularisation cannot be claimed as a matter of right outside the framework for public employment.

The decision placed the responsibility for resolving the issue back on the government. However, the government said during the hearing that there was a "blanket ban on engagements" (hiring freeze), which limits the possibility of absorption of workers.

Government data tabled in the assembly in 2026 stated that more than 55,000 daily-rated and work-charged employees who were engaged before the 1994 cut off had been cleared for regularisation under SRO 64 over the years, particularly in departments such as PHE, irrigation, forests and public works. But thousands of workers engaged after that period remained outside its ambit.

In some cases, courts have continued to direct authorities to examine claims of workers engaged before specific cut-off dates under the earlier rules. However, this has not been adequate to address the scope of the problem.

The family of a pump operator this author met, who has been working for the last thirty years and now earns around Rs 9,000 a month, illustrates the crisis. When he first began this job, his wages were inadequate to fulfil basic needs. Thirty years later, he does the same work with the same uncertainty. It forces a simple question: what will it take for the state to recognise its worker?

Questions that matter

Rajinder Singh, a member of the PHE Employees United Front–Jammu Province, a body representing daily wagers and temporary workers in the Jal Shakti  department, says, “The official figures presented in J&K assembly have created confusion."

Their long-standing demand is that since a framework for regularisation already existed under SRO 64, workers engaged under similar conditions should be considered under that framework instead of waiting for an entirely new policy or clubbing together disparate workers.

For example, said Singh, many Jal Shakti (erstwhile PHE) daily wagers were directly engaged by the J&K government. Clubbing them with those engaged under centrally sponsored schemes inflates the numbers of workers awaiting regularisation, creating a hurdle for workers pressing the issue.

J&K's dependence on temporary labour has gradually become embedded in the system, allowing departments to function without long-term commitments. At the same time, the government’s concerns over finances cannot be dismissed. Regularising one lakh workers would require substantial planning, resources and sustained commitment, particularly when unemployment is a major challenge. Yet, phased regularisation and graded benefit structures do exist.

The question, then, is not simply whether it can be done, but whether there is the political will to do it.

As yet another Labour Day passed by the temporary workers in J&K, the same questions linger: What will happen to those who have already retired after decades of service without ever being made permanent? What about families of workers who died waiting? Will regularisation bring full benefits, or will it be partial, limited and conditional?

Meanwhile, daily wagers report to the same departments and perform the same duties as before. They remain essential to the system, but outside its protections.

Kanwal Singh is a policy analyst.

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