MADURAI: The Tamil Nadu Government has been set an October 13 deadline to decide on the implementation of the recommendations of the committee constituted for examining the Seventh Pay Commission report.
The Madurai bench of the Madras High Court on Thursday also made it clear that if the government needs more time to implement the recommendations of the committee, they should pay an interim relief to the employees, which could be adjusted against the final payment.
State chief secretary, Ms. Girija Vaidyanathan was present in the court when a division bench comprising Justices K K Sasidharan and G R Swaminathan issued this direction while hearing the contempt petition filed by T Sekar against Action Committee of Tamil Nadu Teachers Organisations - Government Employees Organisations (Jactto-Geo) for willful disobedience of the order passed by this court on September 7, restraining them from restoring to indefinite strike.
The court had sought the chief secretary's presence to ascertain the views of the government for resolving the dispute.
Vijay Narayan, advocate general for Tamil Nadu Government informed the court that the committee would submit its recommendation on September 30 and the Government would take appropriate decisions to implement it at the earliest.
Justice Sasidharan told the government to keep the disciplinary action initiated against the employees for participating in the strike under abeyance until its further orders.
The judge further directed the government not to cut their salaries, instead they could ask them to work on weekends and compensate for the period of absence.
The senior counsel NGR Prasad who appeared for the government employees, contended that though the Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa on February l19 last year had on the floor of the Legislative Assembly assured to examine the shortcomings of the 'Contribution Pension Scheme' and had formed an expert committee in this regard, so far the committee had not come out with any final decision on it.
Mr Prasad urged the court to issue directions to revise the old pension scheme for the welfare of employees.
Countering this, Vijay Narayan said that the expert committee was examining it from various aspects and they have also sought the opinion from professors of Madras School of Economics. They committee tentatively fixed November 30 for the submission of its report, he pointed out. However, the court directed the government clearly specify the date for submission of the report.
Earlier, he also argued that be it the implementation of Central government's Seventh Pay Commission's recommendations or the new pension scheme, the government needed to consider various aspects because it has various departments and employees working at different pay scales and also its overall financial position. In fact it took two years for the implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission's recommendations in Tamil Nadu, said the AG.
On Anganwadi and noon-meal workers salary issue, Vijay Narayan said that Tamil Nadu was paying the highest salary between Rs 7,000 and 10,000 to them in the entire country. Recording the submissions, the court posted the next hearing on October 23.
