Kerala HC refuses to grant interim stay on ordinance for salary deferment

Kerala High Court on Tuesday refused to grant interim stay on an ordinance brought by the state government to defer the salaries of government employees for six months in view of the coronavirus crisis.

A single-judge bench of Justice Bechu Kurian Thomas was hearing a batch of petitions challenging the Kerala Disaster and Public Health Emergency (Special Provisions) Ordinance, 2020, claiming it was violative of the Indian Constitution.

"The entries under the lists given in Schedule 7 of the Constitution have to be literally and widely interpreted," the bench observed and deferred the matter till the second week of June.

The court said that when the government says that they have legislative competence under the aforementioned entries, the court cannot interfere with the ordinance at such a nascent stage.

"The purpose behind the ordinance was to only defer an amount payable to a certain specified class of employees belonging to certain specified institutions. The Ordinance itself provided that the Government will notify a mechsm for paying back the deferred amount and it does not partake in taking away the rights of employees," the court said.

It also refused to stay the subsequent notifications issued by the Government for deferment of payment to government teachers and denied the request for exempting the health workers from this ordinance while holding that the ordinance uniformly applies to all government employees and that there is no classification entailed therein and hence, any interference is uncalled for.

"With this ordinance, the government can defer 25 percent salary of the employees without their consent. So, this ordinance is unconstitutional. We seek to stay the procedure to defer the salary of employees at the base of the ordinance," the petition said.

The ordinance was brought after Kerala High Court stayed for two months, an order of the state government which deferred six days' salary of all state government employees for a period of six months in view of the financial burden caused by the coronavirus crisis.

( With inputs from ANI )