DEARNESS ALLOWANCE IS A LEGAL RIGHT OF THE EMPLOYEE – CALCUTTA HIGH COURT DECISION
The
SAT had said that DA was the government’s discretion and that employees
could not claim to have a right to it, but Debasish Kar Gupta and Sekhar
B. Saraf, judges of the Calcutta high court, said in their verdict that
inflation affects everyone across the country and that the appellate
tribunal must reconsider the claim for DA from state government
employees in the light of the rate determined by the Centre.
The
judges observed that DA payment by the Centre is equal across the
country. So the SAT must consider if it is justified to pay differential
rates to employees posted in, say, Chennai and Delhi, the judges said
in their verdict. They directed the tribunal to hear the dispute between
the state and its employees rapidly and dispose of the matter within
two months.
Advocate
Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya had argued for the employees that with the
introduction of the Revision of Pay and Allowances Rule 2009, DA had
become an enforceable legal right.
If the
state does not implement the recommendations of the pay commission and
pay 56% DA by the end of November, employees and pensioners of the West
Bengal government will intensify their movement, said Bijoy Krishna
Sinha, general secretary of the co-ordination committee of state
government employees.
“We will be forced to march to the state secretariat,” he added.
With
general elections less than a year away, the state government wants to
pay up, but it does not have the resources to meet the demand, said a
key official who asked not to be named. The state has the option to
appeal Friday’s Calcutta high court verdict, but it is not clear if it
will, this person added.
Back in June, the state government had announced a hike in DA, but the benefits will start to flow only from January next year.