The Punjab and Haryana high court on Monday pulled up the Punjab government for “attempting to buy time” by not properly pursuing an appeal against its August 3 order directing payment of pending dearness allowance (DA) dues to state government employees and pensioners within a fortnight, and sought an immediate status report from the Supreme Court registry on the appeal.
In this judgment, the court had directed the Punjab government to release all up-to-date pending instalments of DA to all its employees and pensioners at the rates paid to the members of the All India Services (IAS/IPS/IFS) officers serving in the state on the central government pattern within a fortnight. “This statement (regarding defects) of fact is emphatically denied by the applicants. The order came during the hearing of two applications filed by Punjab government employees and pensioners alleging that the August 3 high court order had not been complied with. However, the government failed to comply with the order and filed an appeal before the apex court on September 1.
The court had also ordered that till all such dues were cleared, the government would not “resort to any unproductive expenditures”, such as large-scale advertising campaigns in print or social media, as these expenses could not justify the denial of dues admissible to state employees. Month on, the case has not been taken up by the apex court as the government has yet to remove some defects pointed out by the Supreme Court registry, said lawyers. “Now the same has been re-filed by the state government after removing the defects and is likely to be listed as per the procedures,” Sinha submitted.
Sinha had filed an affidavit stating that the government had taken a conscious decision to avail of the remedy available in law and the appeal filed was lying pending under defect before the apex court. In the event a false statement is made before the court, then the party making such statement would have to bear the consequences,” the court observed while noting submissions from both the advocate general and Sinha that defects had been removed.
