The Punjab government on Tuesday moved the Supreme Court against a Punjab and Haryana High Court order directing it to clear around ₹ 14,191 crore in pending dearness allowance (DA) and dearness relief (DR) dues to state employees and pensioners within a fortnight, arguing that the direction is not merely difficult to comply with but “constitutionally impossible”.
In its petition, filed through the additional chief secretary, finance, the state challenged the August 3 judgment directing payment of the dues at rates applicable to All India Services officers serving in Punjab. The shortfall of ₹ 5,676 and ₹ 7,372 would turn into surpluses of ₹ 4,800 and ₹ 2,240 respectively. The state said the high court’s direction to pay the entire admitted arrears within 14 days ignored this financial plan as well as the constitutional procedure governing withdrawals from the Consolidated Fund.
It said the high court had effectively ordered withdrawal of a massive amount from the state’s Consolidated Fund without following the constitutionally prescribed procedure. The two categories in which Punjab employees were shown to be behind the corresponding central categories — superintendent and police inspector — would also move into surplus under the state’s proposed calculations, the plea said.
The state also disputed the high court’s comparison of its employees’ salaries with those of central government employees, saying its existing DA rate of 42% already results in higher aggregate monthly emoluments in five of the seven representative categories cited before the court. Because it has no power to determine their service conditions, it said, punjab merely pays them DA at the central rate.
The government said All India Services officers were a fundamentally different category since their service conditions are governed by Union law.
The state has questioned the very basis for treating the DA rates applicable to central government employees and All India Services officers as the benchmark for Punjab government employees.
The high court had also ordered that the state pay 6% simple interest in case of default and restrained it from incurring “unproductive” expenditure until the DA and DR dues were cleared.
