After Bombay Hospital denied regular employee status to a sweeper for nearly two decades following an HIV-positive diagnosis, the Bombay High Court ordered the establishment to give the employee permanency.
On December 23, 2025, Justice Sandeep V Marne set aside an Industrial Court order dated May 3, 2023. He directed the hospital to declare the petitioner, Kumar Dashrath Kamble, permanent from December 1, 2006, the date of a settlement that regularised 150 temporary employees.
Kamble has been employed since 1994 and was initially found HIV-negative in 1999. However, he was declared “unfit” during a medical examination in 2006 under the settlement terms. Even though his peers were confirmed permanent, he remained a temporary sweeper until January 2017, when he was regularised on “humanitarian grounds.”
His plea for parity was dismissed by the Industrial Court in May 2023.
Justice Marne denounced this as a denial and the Industrial Court’s approach, stating that “denial of benefit of permanency to the Petitioner on the ground of his status as HIV+ is clearly arbitrary, discriminatory and violative of Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution of India.”
“If Petitioner could be continued in service for the last 19 long years after being detected HIV+, I do not see any reason why the benefit of permanency needs to be denied to him when his coworkers were made permanent,” the Bombay High Court order said.
“What has happened in the present case is that the HIV+ status of the Petitioner is being used by the Hospital to extract the same work from him by paying him lesser wages,” the order further stated. “Rather than adopting a pedantic and hyper-technical approach, the Industrial Court ought to have considered the real grievance of the Petitioner in denial of benefit of permanency on account of failure in the medical examination test.”
Justice Marne pointed out that the “petitioner is a poor sweeper who is wrongfully denied the benefit of permanency on account of his status of being HIV+, and the hospital has extracted the same work from him by denying him the benefits admissible to permanent workers.”
In light of its findings and observations, the Bombay High Court declared Kamble a permanent employee from December 1, 2006. However, the financial benefits were restricted to start from July 5, 2018, 90 days before he filed his complaint. This was, as per the court, due to delay and limitation principles under the MRTU & PULP Act.
“Respondent-Hospital cannot be saddled with the financial burden of paying difference in wages for an unduly long period of 12 long years,” the court explained, adding that the hospital must pay arrears within three months. Should they fail in meeting the deadline, an interest of 8% per annum will become applicable.
Justice Marne pointed out that the HIV-AIDS (Prevention and Control) Act, 2017, prohibits discrimination in employment, and while its provisions are prospective, its principles cannot be ignored. The Bombay High Court also cited the Allahabad High Court’s ruling in the Shailesh Kumar Shukla vs Union of India case, which held that HIV status cannot justify the denial of employment or promotion.
