Unpaid salaries: HC comes down heavily on govt, MCDs
New Delhi: Taking strong exception to the months-long pending salaries of MCD employees and pensioners, the Delhi High Court on Thursday came down heavily on
the Delhi government and the BJP-led municipal corporations stating that it was "disgusted" with the situation which has arisen due to "politicisation" of the matter.
Hearing a batch of petitions seeking timely payment of salaries, the bench of Justices Vipin Sanghi and Rekha Palli, stated: "We cannot tell you how disgusted we are with all of you. You have absolutely no concern for the employees...the problem has arisen because the Delhi government is sandwiched between the Centre and the MCD which is ruled by the opposition party."
The bench stated, "We are not pointing fingers because we find all of you are completely behaving irresponsibly with no sense of respect towards these poor employees and pensioners."
Noting ASC Satyakam's submission that the Delhi government's "hands are tied" and that they are "short on revenue", Justice Sanghi orally stated, "During the pandemic, please takeout the publications of advertisements by Delhi government on newspapers. How much money have you spent advertisements? We want to know that..." Justice Sanghi remarked.
The court further said that, in respect of this, it will order "a CAG inquiry". "We will order the CAG to look into this. What is happening? Do you think we are living in ivory towers and we don't know what is going on?" the court asked.
The court further said, "We will tell them (employees) not to come to work from tomorrow. Let us see how your streets are cleaned and your hospitals are run and if necessary we will put a lock on the offices of these municipalities".
"We are ashamed of you and your leaders if this is the way you have to behave. You are fighting like cats and dogs...we have not asked you to give them any favour. We have only asked you for an adjustment. Everybody is going through a hard time," the bench orally stated.
"Don't the political class have to mature? If this is the way things go on, I won't be surprised if the politicians and people who indulge in this are lynched by the public at large," Justice Sanghi remarked.
After expressing its opposition to the Delhi government adjusting the outstanding loans undertaken by it during the pandemic from the funds provided to the MCDs, the court said that the recovery of the dole advanced to the municipal corporations was "not justified" and ordered the AAP government to transfer the funds back to the corporation within a period of two weeks.
The bench also ordered that the pending salary dues for the month of October should be fulfilled first after which the corpus should be used for the rest of the months.
The matter has now been posted for further hearing on February 22.
