New Delhi: The Delhi High Court Tuesday asked four colleges under the Delhi University (DU) to reply on a plea by teachers seeking direction to the institutions, affiliated to the varsity and fully funded by the AAP government, to release their salaries pending for the last four months.
A bench of Justices Hima Kohli and Subramonium Prasad asked Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar College, Bhagini Nivedita College, Aditi Mahavidyalaya Women's College and Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies to file their status reports on the petition.
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The court also asked the Delhi government and Delhi University to file their replies to the plea and listed the matter for further hearing on November 4.
Initially, the plea was filed against 12 colleges for non-payment salaries; however, the court deleted eight of them from memo of parties as two of the colleges have now paid the salaries to the staff till August and no employee of rest of the six colleges have approached the court with their grievance.
Advocate Ashok Agarwal, appearing for the teachers, argued that the Delhi government was punishing 2000 families without any fault and it should immediately release the grant to colleges to enable them to pay the employees' salaries.
The petition has said apart from these teachers there are other employees, teaching and non-teaching staff, who have not received their salaries for the months of May, June, July and August.
The eight teachers, who have filed the plea through advocate Kumar Utkarsh, said they are members of Delhi University Teachers Association (DUTA), which on behalf of the aggrieved staff, has been writing to the Delhi government for the release of funds to enable the 12 DU colleges, funded by the government, to pay due to salaries to 1500 teachers and non-teaching staff working there.
The plea said due to non-payment of salaries to the teachers, they and all other employees working with these colleges are undergoing mental agony and harassment and contended that there is no justification on the part of authorities to not to pay them their dues on time.
The impugned actions are unjust, unfair, arbitrary, discriminatory, unethical, unconstitutional, violative of Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution of India read with the provisions of Delhi University Act, 1922.
The impugned actions are bad in law as much as the same is violative of right to life as well as the right to livelihood as guaranteed under Article 21 of Constitution of India, the plea contended.
It sought a direction to the authorities to pay salaries to the petitioners due from May this year till date and also ensure timely payment of salaries in future.
The plea said the 12 colleges which are affiliated with the Delhi University and are fully funded by the Delhi government are Acharya Narendra Dev College, Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar College, Bhaskaracharya College of Applied Sciences, Bhagini Nivedita College, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya College, Aditi Mahavidyalaya Women's College, Indira Gandhi Institute of Physical Education & Sports Sciences, Keshav Mahavidyalaya, Maharaja Agrasen College (DU), Maharshi Valmiki College of Education, Shaheed Rajguru College of Applied Sciences for Women and Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies.
(PTI report)
