BENGALURU: Stating that it is highly uncouth on the part of the State Government to stop the salaries of the existing teachers and that making someone work without payment of salary would amount to begar, the Karnataka High Court directed the State Government to release salaries that are withheld of the employees working in BVV Sangha’s Basaveshwar Engineering College at Vidyanagar of Bagalkot within seven days.
If salaries are not released, even a day later than seven days, shall carry 6% interest per annum, from the date it is withheld, till the date of payment, the court cautioned.
Justice M Nagaprasanna passed the order while allowing in part the petition filed by Basaveshwar Engineering College, an aided institution, questioning the order dated June 29, 2024, issued by the Department of Technical Education by which a few excess teaching and non-teaching staff of another college are deployed into the petitioner’s institution unilaterally without consultation.
“It is highly uncouth on the part of the State Government to stop the salaries of the existing teachers, as an arm-twisting tactic, making the petitioner’s institution obey the orders,” the court said.
The Department of Technical Education deputed six staff from the BVB Engineering College in Hubballi to the petitioner’s college through the impugned order.
The college in turn communicates to the department expressing its inability to allow joining or let in those six deployed staff into the college.
Therefore, the State Government stopped releasing salaries to all the employees working in the petitioner’s institution solely on the score that the petitioner’s institution had not obeyed the orders of the government.