The officials had to face the high court's wrath for not implementing recommendations of the Shetty commission regarding pay benefits for class-3 and class-4 staff of the courts, and of Padmanabhan Commission for judicial officers of Labour courts.
Faced with an angry Gujarat high court, the state government is ready to constitute a special committee to address the grievances of judicial staff and judges of the state judiciary.
As directed earlier by a bench headed by chief justice SJ Mukhopadhyay, additional chief secretaries Balvant Singh and MM Srivastav; principal secretary of the finance department Atanu Charkraborty; joint secretary of the general administration department (GAD) Harsh Brahmbhatt; and joint secretary in the law department Vipul Raval were present in court on Friday.
The officials had to face the high court's wrath for not implementing recommendations of the Shetty commission regarding pay benefits for class-3 and class-4 staff of the courts, and of Padmanabhan Commission for judicial officers of Labour courts.
When the case came up for hearing on Friday, the chief justice asked the senior government officers what action they had taken to implement revised pay-scales for the courts' employees. “For how many years has the matter been kept pending and how many more orders you (government) want from the court?” the chief justice said.
At one point, though the government pleader, PK Jani, was present, the chief justice insisted on having answers from only the officers. The chief justice also took serious note of the fact that the court's orders had not been taken seriously by the state government.
“If a minister had ordered something, it would have been cleared within weeks. But the facts of the present case show that the government has not acted effectively for almost two years after almost 40 orders of the court,” the chief justice said.
At this, one of the secretaries informed the court that the law minister had cleared the file of class-3 and 4 employees today, and that it would be placed before the chief minister today itself. After that, the government will take the Governor's approval, the official said.
However, when the chief justice asked for specific suggestions about how to permanently address the grievances of the state judiciary, the secretary said the government would constitute a committee comprising officials from GAD, finance and law departments to address the problems.
The CJ then took the suggestion on record and adjourned the case for further hearing on June 14.
VK Joshi, counsel for class-3 and 4 employees and court librarians, had submitted that the government was making an exception of implementing the revised pay scales recommended by the Shetty and Padmnabhan commissions.
But the pay scales had already been implemented by almost all other states, Joshi said.
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