HC orders continuation of secretariat pay for staff of 3 varsities

The Punjab government argued that the state bears the financial burden and has the right to stop the benefit of secretariat pay as university employees cannot be treated at par with the employees of the state civil secretariat.

The Punjab and Haryana high court (HC) has quashed the Punjab government’s instructions of 2019, whereby two universities in the state, along with Panjab University, Chandigarh, were told to discontinue secretariat pay.

The Punjab and Haryana high court has quashed instructions which the Punjab government issued five years ago.

“.. the state government has no jurisdiction to interfere in the day-to-day working of the university once the syndicate has taken the decision to grant parity to its employees with that of employees of the Punjab civil secretariat,” the bench of justice Namit Kumar said.

The secretariat pay is a special pay granted to some category of employees, mainly in state civil secretariats. It is higher than the salary being given to similar category of employees in other places. The decision will affect thousands of employees in these universities.

The petitions against the move were from individual employees and non-teaching employees’ associations of Punjabi University (Patiala), Guru Nanak Dev University (Amritsar) and Panjab University (Chandigarh). They had argued that the benefit granted was in conformity with the provisions of the statute, which empowers the university to grant the benefit of pay scales/grade pay/allowances at par with the employees of the Punjab civil secretariat.

Taking example of the GNDU, it was submitted that in December 1979, the finance committee of the university passed a resolution and recommended that the university employees in respect of common categories of posts would get the grades as per the Punjab civil secretariat employees and the recommendation of the finance committee was approved by the varsity’s syndicate. In 2001 again the syndicate, noted that all the facilities would be granted to the employees of the university as are given to the employees of the Punjab civil secretariat.

The government had argued that the state bears the financial burden and has the right to stop the benefit of secretariat pay as the employees of the university cannot be treated at par with the employees of the state civil secretariat.

The court recorded that a conscious decision was taken by the university to treat its employees at par with that of Punjab civil secretariat employees. Also varsity never claimed any extra budget allocation to give this benefit.

It observed that for the last more than 44 years, the employees of the university are drawing pay scales/grade pay/allowances at par with their counter parts in the state civil secretariat with the knowledge and recommendation of two top officers(principal secretary, department of higher education and languages; and principal secretary, department of finance) nominated by the government in syndicate. It further added that despite having no jurisdiction, the two officers in 2019 tried to interfere in the day-to-ay affairs of the university and asked the university to either withdraw the secretariat pay or to face cut in the grant-in-aid on the ground that the state government never equated the employees of the university at par with the employees of state civil secretariat.

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