Low revenue no reason for not giving funds for salaries, says High Court

Delhi High Court on Monday told the AAP Government that its depleting revenue could not be given as the reason to not release funds to the municipal corporations to pay their staff salaries.

A bench comprising of Chief Justice D N Patel and Justice Prateek Jalan told the state government to find a solution and come prepared with a roadmap on August 10.

The court’s comments came after the government submitted that during Covid-19, its revenues had gone down.

“That (revenue depletion) cannot be an answer. Solution has to be found. Figure it out and give us a solution,” the bench said, underlining that sanitation workers and doctors could not be made to wait on this ground.

The court was hearing an application moved by North Delhi Municipal Corporation seeking Rs 90.6 crore payable as grant-in-aid under the sanitation/urban development head for the first quarter ending on June 30. It added that Rs 181 crore under the same head for the second quarter was also due.

In its application filed through advocate Mini Pushkarna, the municipal corporation informed the court that the funding would enable it to pay salaries to safai karamcharis and related sanitation activities.

The application had been filed in a pending writ petition seeking directions to Delhi government and the municipal corporations to pay the salaries with arrears to sanitation workers employed by them.

In its plea, the north corporation said that expenditure towards the salary till May 2020, sanitation services and providing PPE kits, including gloves, masks and sanitisers, to the workers had been incurred by it from its internal resources.

It added that Delhi government had not been releasing grant-in-aid payments timely under the category of health, and it released around Rs 27.6 crore under the health plan only on July 9.

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