Himachal Pradesh HC upholds employees’ constitutional right to timely salaries

Himachal Pradesh High Court.

Taking a strong exception of the state’s apathy and inaction in denying wages/salaries to 99 nurses at state government-run Lal Bahadur Shastri Medical College Hospital, (Nerchowk) Mandi, Himachal Pradesh High Court upheld the constitutional right of the employees to get timely wages .

The court also held that any laxity in payment of the wages, arbitrarily for a period of more than six months, would mean that right to livelihood was denied in the State, thus, is a blatant violation of Article 21 of the Constitution of India.

In a 21-page order passed by a division bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Sanjay Karol and Justice Ajay Mohan Goel , the court said, “In case of the emoluments not being disbursed on schedule, except otherwise being withheld as per law, the state and its instrumentalities shall be liable to compensate the employees by paying statutory interest, or the existing rate for saving bank deposit account provided by the SBI, whichever is higher.”

The order came on a PIL, which the court had taken-up in its suo-motu action, as the report of denial of the salaries for seven months to the nurses had alarmed the court .

The court while passing a series of directions to the Chief secretary, who has been asked to file an affidavit within four weeks, asked him to create a mechanism for enabling the employees to vent out their grievances of non-disbursement of due and admissible wages/salaries/emoluments. And one such mechanism being of setting up a ‘Web Portal’ at the level of the Principal Secretary/ secretary of the concerned department(s), where the employees can lodge their grievances/complaints.

“All the HoDs state Instrumentalities should ensure that emoluments to all employees of their respective departments/Institutes are disbursed in time. In case of said emoluments not being disbursed on schedule, except in the event of the emoluments being withheld as per law, the state/ instrumentality shall be liable to compensate the employees concerned by paying statutory interest,” the order reads.

The court also asked the government to conduct an inquiry, which shall be completed within a period of 30 days, to ascertain the omission on the part of the concerned person, resulting in delay of disbursement on schedule and in pursuant to the findings of the inquiry, the interest which stands paid to such employee, shall be recovered from the erring officer(s)/officials(s).

Earlier during the hearing, the state government in reply admitted that salaries could not be disbursed for want of grant-in-aid under the appropriate Head of Account but now a budgetary allocation of a sum of Rs 1.75 crore, including grant-in-aid salary was made.

“With the completion of codal formalities, emoluments to the tune of Rs 72.71 lakhs stood released to the appointees till August 31,2017,” said a government counsel .