The Madras High Court has directed the State government to constitute a Pay Grievance Redressal Committee for its employees within three weeks.
The panel will be under the Chairmanship of Justice A.S. Venkatachalamoorthy, a former Chief Justice. The government could nominate one or two senior level IAS officers at the level of Principal Secretary on the committee. It should give specific terms of reference with a request to submit a report for taking a fresh decision regarding the enhancement/reduction of pay scales/grade pay of 52 or more categories of 20 or more departments.
The government should prescribe the time limit within which the report/recommendations should be submitted by the committee for taking a fresh decision. In view of the formation of the committee, the implementation of two GOs of February 2011 and July 2013 in so far as it affected any category of government servants/pensioners/family pensioners, which were not implemented as on today, should not be effected till a fresh decision is taken.
If any category of government servants of any department, which had been offered higher scales of pay as on date, it was open to the government to implement the same in so far as the pay scales which were beneficial to the employees.
A Division Bench comprising Justices N. Paul Vasanthakumar and P. Devadass passed the common judgment on a batch of writ petitions and appeals.
A grievance of petitioners was that the State government which implemented the VI Pay Commission benefits from January 1, 2006, notionally with monetary benefits from January 1, 2007, merely because some anomaly was pointed out by some association and prayed for enhancement of pay scale, was not justified in reducing the pay fixed thereby causing monetary loss.
