Kerala loses Rs. 750 cr central share to pay off college teachers’ salary dues

The document received through a Right to Information request says that, the Kerala Government possibly lost out on Rs 750 crore that the Centre should have given it to pay college and university teachers’ back pay arrears.

Due to the State’s late submission of the necessary paperwork, the Centre’s share has yet to be collected; nonetheless, the State insists that the proposal was filed on time.

College professors claim that the arrears have already been disbursed in other States.

The Kerala Government issued an order in June 2019 permitting lecturers at State Universities and Colleges to be paid according to the University Grants Commission pay scales suggested by the Central Pay Commission in 2016. From April of 2016 through March of 2019, there has been a salary gap of three years.

Between February 24 and March 10, the Union Education Department wrote to the States requesting that they submit their plan to grant the arrears before March 31, 2022. Thus, the proposal that was due to be submitted in 2018 was postponed until March of 2022. However, after extending the deadline for proposal submission, the Union Education Department made it plain in a letter to 22 States, including Kerala, that a 50% share of the arrears cannot be permitted because the submitted ideas were not specific and explicit.

In response to queries from MLAs in the Assembly, the State Higher Education Minister R Bindu explained that the suggestions were delivered to the Union Education Department in April 2019, June 2020, and three times in March 2022.

In addition to these, a State Higher Education Department decree from May 5, 2020 states that the Government has chosen to partially credit the arrears to the instructors’ individual General Provident Fund (GPF) accounts. The order states that the arrears can be withdrawn by the teachers from their GPF accounts in January 2023, July 2023, January 2024, and July 2024. This allowed the teachers to withdraw the initial portion of their arrears credit from the previous month.

The Finance Department’s directive from January 21 states that this decision has been delayed since the State’s finances are in poor shape and the Centre’s portion has not yet been approved.