Telangana govt issues ordinance cutting retirement benefits for regularised temporary staff

Telangana government issues an ordinance cutting retirement benefits for temporary employees whose services were regularised over the years. Nearly 7,000 employees may be affected, as the move seeks to avoid a Rs 20,000 crore financial burden on the State exchequer

Hyderabad: In a bid to avoid Rs 20,000 crore burden on the exchequer, the cash-starved State government has issued an ordinance cutting off retirement benefits to temporary employees, whose services were regularised over a period of time in different government departments.

The ordinance was issued on November 25 amending the Telangana (Regularisation of Appointments to Public Services and Rationalisation of Staff Pattern and Pay Structure) Act, 1994.

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With these new amendments coming into force, nearly 7,000 government employees are expected to get affected.

In 1994, the State government had permitted regularisation of employees with a few specific conditions on a one-time basis. These include full-time temporary employees with five years of service and part-time temporary employees with 10 years of service.

Later in 1997, the government, through a memo, clarified that regularisation shall only be prospective.

Due to different administrative reasons and non-availability of substantive vacancies, the regularisation got delayed for years. A few cases still continue to be under examination in different departments.

The delay in regularisation led to litigation with employees insisting on retrospective regularisation. Courts had taken divergent views over the effective date of regularisation and the State government’s efforts to contest such orders in the Supreme Court did not succeed. Accordingly, several contempt petitions were filed by the aggrieved employees.

The current Congress government’s contention is that with the introduction of the New Pension Scheme effective from September 1, 2004, retrospective regularisation would facilitate the temporary employees getting eligible under the Contributory Pension Scheme.

This would effectively make the temporary employees get more benefits than those regularly recruited government employees after September 1, 2004.

At this juncture, implementing the court orders of retrospective regularisation is expected to impose a burden of nearly Rs 20,000 crore on the State, which is against public interest, the government claims.

To avoid this financial burden, the Congress government issued an ordinance on November 25 making a few amendments over the eligibilities for regularisation of services. During the next Assembly session, a Bill is likely to be presented in the House.