The Delhi High Court on Friday pulled up the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) over delayed payment of salaries to its employees and its failure to implement the seventh pay commission’s recommendations, warning that if the civic body failed to make itself financially viable, the High Court order its dissolution.
The Bench of Acting Chief Justice Manmohan and Justice Manmeet PS Arora passed the order on a batch of petitions concerning the non-payment of salaries and pensions by the corporation.
The High Court questioned how could an entity, which was not able to pay its employees and pensioners, undertake any development work and favoured replacing the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) with a ‘better system’.
It asked the MCD that if the civic body could not pay salaries and implement (the) seventh pay commission, how was it expected to carry out development work? Which contractor will work for it? When MCD cannot pay salaries, what development will it do, added the Bench.
The Counsel appearing for MCD said that the conditions of the civic body have improved after its unification, adding that salaries and pensions have been paid up to the month of January.
Noting that the present batch of cases filed by the employees and pensioners have been pending for seven years, the court said that MCD cannot ‘hold’ poor people to ransom as the payment of their dues was not charity.
The Bench directed MCD to pay the dues for the month of February within 10 days, stating that these were statutory dues, which should be paid on time. Noting that the petitioners cannot come every month, it told MCD that the situation cannot linger on like this.
Directing the civic body to make itself ‘financially viable,’ the High Court said that if it cannot pay salaries to its workers, it had no business to stay. Some better system must emerge from this, added the Bench, while observing that the law has empowered the Centre to dissolve the MCD.
The High Court orally asked the counsel representing the government during the hearing to take instructions on the aspect of issuance of a notice to the MCD in relation to any proposed dissolution.
Since the Delhi government and the MCD were now on the ‘same page,’ the financial affairs of the civic body must be put in order, it added.
The Bench observed that a little bit of arm-twisting was going on in the matter. The MCD said it will not pay, the Centre must pay. These people were not held being held by some terrorist group, it added, while talking to the Delhi government’s counsel.
The MCD’s counsel suggested that the court direct a meeting of the stakeholders to iron out the disputes.
Retorting that ‘it has done enough’, the bench asked the civic body to ‘fix a meeting on your own’ and granted it time to resolve the issue of payment of arrears of the seventh pay commission to its employees.
It directed the MCD to either settle its disputes or the High Court will have to tell the Centre that the civic body needs to be dissolved. If MCD was not willing to set its house in order, the Court will close the house.
It observed that inefficient people need to be told that there was no scope for them. MCD generated litigation because of its own inefficiency and corruption.