HC seeks reply of AAP government, Delhi University over staff salary dues

NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court on Tuesday asked four DU colleges to reply on a plea by teachers seeking direction to the institutions, affiliated to the varsity and fully funded by the AAP government, to release their salaries pending for the last four months.

A bench of Justices Hima Kohli and Subramonium Prasad asked Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar College, Bhagini Nivedita College, Aditi Mahavidyalaya Women’s College and Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies to file reports on the petition. The court also asked the Delhi government and Delhi University to file their replies to the plea and listed the matter for further hearing on November 4.

Initially, the plea was filed against 12 colleges for non-payment salaries; however, the court deleted eight of them from memo of parties as two of the colleges have now paid the salaries to the staff till August and no employee of rest of the six colleges have approached the court with their grievance.

Advocate Ashok Agarwal, appearing for the teachers, argued that Delhi government was punishing 2,000 families without any fault and it should immediately release the grant to colleges to enable them to pay the employees’ salaries.

The petition has said apart from these teachers there are other employees, teaching and non-teaching staff, who have not received their salaries for the months of May, June, July and August. The eight teachers, who have filed the plea through advocate Kumar Utkarsh, said they are members of Delhi University Teachers Association, which on behalf of the aggrieved staff, has been writing to the Delhi government for release of funds.