HC: Low revenue no reason for not giving Funds for Salaries

On Monday, the High Court of Delhi told the Delhi Govt 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 of Chief Justice D N Patel & Justice Prateek Jalan told the AAP Govt to find a solution & come prepared with a roadmap on Aug 10. 

The HC’s comments came after the Govt submitted that during Coronavirus, its revenues had gone down.

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

The Court was hearing an application moved by North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) 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 & related sanitation activities.

The plea had been filed in a pending writ petition seeking directions to Delhi Govt & 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 & providing PPE kits, including gloves, masks & sanitisers, to the workers had been incurred by it from its internal resources.

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

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