KOLKATA: The Trinamool Congress government in West Bengal on Thursday formed a five-member review committee headed by the chief secretary, Nandini Chakraborty, to review the Supreme Court directives on payment of dearness allowance (DA) to its employees in the State.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, while speaking to reporters in a post-budget press conference at the West Bengal Legislative Assembly this afternoon, hours after the SC judgment on the DA case, said, “We have not yet received a copy of the apex court order. We don’t want to make any comment on the directive. The court has formed a committee comprising its retired judges. There is no one from Bengal in the committee.”
“We will review it after taking legal opinions. A five-member committee led by the chief secretary has been formed to review the court directives. The government will follow the committee’s recommendations,” the Chief Minister said.
Mamata also said, “Besides Bengal, no other State in the country gives pension to its retired employees. We could have saved huge funds if we hadn’t given pensions.”
Today, the SC observed that DA is a legally enforceable right and directed the West Bengal government to pay it to its employees for the period from 2008 to 2019.
A Bench of Justices Sanjay Karol and Prashant Kumar Mishra directed the state government to pay 25 per cent of the outstanding DA to its employees by March 6.
Sources in the State Secretariat Nabanna felt, “With directives of the SC, there will be an additional expenditure of around Rs 10,000 for payment of 25 per cent outstanding DA to its employees, including those who are retired by the 6 March deadline.”
"It would be a difficult task to arrange the huge fund in addition to hiking the monthly grant for about 2.40 crore women beneficiaries under the Lakshmir Bhandar scheme for the bankrupt state government", sources requesting anonymity said.
"To receive dearness allowance is a legally enforceable right that has accrued in favour of the respondents-employees of the State of West Bengal...The employees of the appellant-State shall be entitled to release of arrears in accordance with this judgment for the period 2008-2019," the Bench said.
Mamata also said that the Union Budget was directionless and visionless. "It was a garbage of lies. Despite the Centre’s stepmotherly attitude to release our legitimate funds under different Central schemes, we have prepared our interim budget, and we hope that people will trust us. We are proud of our budget,” she added.
“The Central government is depriving our State. They are not releasing funds and trying to snatch citizenship on suspicion of being Bangladeshis,” she alleged.
She said that there has been a fall in unemployment by 45.65 per cent in West Bengal as per the Centre's report. She stated that more than 1.72 crore people in our State are below the poverty line.