The Madras High Court on Friday doubted whether it could recommend declaration of financial emergency in the State just because the State transport corporations were unable to pay even terminal benefits due to the retired employees despite several orders passed by the court to clear the dues within stipulated time limits.
A Division Bench of Justices S. Manikumar and M. Govindaraj told advocate Ajay Ghosh, representing a trade union affiliated to Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), that it might not be possible to invoke Article 360 of the Constitution without reference to other government undertakings that were performing well financially.
They also said there were hardly any precedent of the President having ever used the power to declare financial emergency in any part of the country, thereby empowering the Centre to issue directions to the State government concerned to observe specified canons of financial propriety by even reducing the salaries of government employees.
When Mr. Ghosh pointed out that the Government was unable to save the transport corporations from the deep financial troubles they were facing, Mr. Justice Manikumar recalled former Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul (now a Supreme Court judge) to have said in June 2015 that the corporations should be either turned profitable or closed down.
Nevertheless, the senior judge said that closing down the State-run corporations might not be in the interest of the employees, since privatisation would lead to the death of the trade union movement. He lamented that government officials were unwilling to take suggestions on revamping the transport corporations.
Pointing out that the corporations had dues running to several hundred crores with respect to payment of compensation to motor accident victims and many of its buses had been attached by lower courts, the judge said it would only be prudent to implement the Kerala model of taking insurance policies for public transport.
The observations were made during the hearing of a writ appeal related to delay in payment of terminal benefits along with interest to retired employees.
