The Karnataka High Court pulled up the government and said that the state government curtailing the benefits for daily wage workers is like “the tail wagging the dog.”
The Karnataka High Court on Saturday ruled that daily wage workers that come under Karnataka Daily Wage Employees Welfare Act, 2012, are entitled to the dearness allowance at 100% like all other government employees. A bench of Justice M Nagaprasanna also ruled that the daily wage workers who work under the various departments of the government were also entitled to paid leave of 30 days. “The soul of the Act being the grant of a better wage and social security on cessation of long public service to a daily wage employee, cannot be reduced to a rope of sand,” the court observed according to a report in The Hindu. The High Court said that the act of the state government curtailing the earned leave and dearness allowance under the Karnataka Daily Wage Employees Welfare Act through government orders was like “the tail wagging the dog instead of the other way around.” Dearness allowance is a sum of money paid to employees by calculating the inflation in the country. Earned leave is a total leave that can be earned in the previous years of employment and availed afterwards within a specified period. “It is trite that administrative instructions in the form of official memoranda or circular or Government Order cannot run counter to the Act or in effect control the Act. This, if permitted, would amount to tail wagging the dog and not the dog wagging the tail,” the court said. According to Deccan Herald, the petition was filed by daily wage employees’ associations and in their petition, the association said that the dearness allowance that was ensured under the Act had been curtailed to 75% in 2014 and had again been increased to 90% in another government order on January 1, 2020. A circular in July 2017 had denied earned leave to the employees and had also said that leave encashment already allowed in the past had to be recovered. However, the HC said that the orders were stripped of their value as goes against the Act and said that the recovery clause was unsustainable. According to The Hindu, the High Court ruled that daily wage employees were entitled to the payment of ex-gratia as well, in accordance with the Act, as determined from time to time by the government.
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