India, Nov. 21 -- The Orissa High Court on Thursday ordered the regularisation of a 60-year-old daily wage employee who worked with the Cuttack Municipal Corporation for over three decades, asserting that the state is "not a mere market participant but a constitutional employer" that cannot exploit long-term workers under temporary labels.

A division bench of chief justice Harish Tandon and justice Murahari Sri Raman directed that Radha Krishna Dash, who joined as a junior assistant on daily wages in November 1990, be regularised with retrospective effect from 1999 with all consequential benefits including pension.

The court termed sensitivity to the human consequences of prolonged insecurity as "a constitutional discipline that should ...