The Delhi High Court has upheld the regularisation of commission-based vendors who have worked for decades supplying refreshments and other services on Indian Railways premises, criticising the Railways for forcing low-wage workers into prolonged litigation to secure rights the Court said should not have been contested in the first place.
In Union of India v. Mithai Lal & Others (2026 LiveLaw (Del) 831), decided in the second week of September 2026, the Bench considered the Railways' challenge to earlier findings that its commission vendors — paid a percentage of sales rather than a fixed wage — were entitled to regularisation on the same footing as other long-serving Railway staff performing comparable work.
Dismissing the Railways' challenge, the Court held that courts have a duty to protect the interests of weaker sections of the workforce, particularly those earning what it described as paltry wages under a commission structure that left them without the security of regular employment. The judgment reiterates a line of service-law jurisprudence that treats long, continuous engagement — regardless of how the pay is structured — as capable of ripening into a claim for regularisation where the underlying work is permanent and necessary to the employer's functioning.
For labour-law practitioners, the ruling is a useful marker of how the courts continue to treat 'commission vendor' and similarly informal pay arrangements when the underlying relationship, on the facts, resembles regular employment.