Publication of 6th Pay Commission report likely to open Pandora’s box for Bengal govt

Kolkata: As an order from a single-judge bench of the Calcutta High Court has made it binding for the West Bengal government to publish the recommendations of the 6th Pay Commission by July 1, the publication might open yet another Pandora’s Box for the state government.

The state government has to publish the recommendations on its portal related to the pay commission matters.

The possible issues that may arise are linked to the existing complications over the pending dearness allowance dues to the state government employees.

Pandora’s box will probably open if there is a mismatch between the DA claims in court with the actual recommendations. That is why the state has not brought them into the public domain so far, and finally, the court had to order it.

The representatives of the United Forum of State Government Employees, the umbrella body spearheading the movement against the state government on the dearness allowance issue, said they doubt that the state government deliberately refrained from bringing the 6th Pay Commission recommendations into the public domain for such a long time.

“In the prolonged case on payment of dearness allowance dues, which was dragged first from the state administrative tribunal to Calcutta High Court and then from Calcutta High Court to Supreme Court, the state government had been constantly claiming that it had been honouring the recommendations of the 6th Pay Commission. Now that the 6th Pay Commission recommendations will be published, we will be able to track how far their claims were authentic. But considering the track record of the current state government, we doubt that it will challenge the order of the single-judge of the Calcutta High Court of Tuesday directing the state to publish the recommendation by July 1 at any higher bench,” said a senior office-bearer of the forum.

While directing the state government to publish the 6th Pay Commission recommendations by July 1, Calcutta High Court’s single judge bench of Justice Amrita Sinha, on Tuesday, also observed that these recommendations were not classified documents and hence could not be left out of the purview of the public domain.

The forum representatives had pointed out that, as it is, the 6th Pay Commission submitted its recommendation to the state government after a record period of 30 months since the time of the constitution of the commission.

“Generally, any pay commission is supposed to submit its recommendations to the state government within six months from the date of constitution of that commission, which can be extended to nine months or even a year. But in the case of the 6th Pay Commission, the recommendations were submitted to the state government 30 months after the date of the constitution of the commission. Even after the submission, those recommendations were left out of the public domain,” the forum office-bearer pointed out.

At the time the report was filed, there had not been any indication from the state government on whether it would publish the 6th Pay Commission recommendations by July 1 or challenge Tuesday’s order of the single-judge bench at any higher bench.

IANS