The Legislative Assembly on Tuesday passed a bill that seeks to grant allowances and pension to the employees of aided educational institutions from the date of according grant-in-aid.
The Karnataka Private Aided Educational Institutions Employees (Regulation of pay, Pension, and other Benefits) Bill, 2014, has provision to circumvent a High Court order that directed the government to pay the pension benefits from the date of appointment. The High Court order was upheld by the Supreme Court.
Piloting the bill, Higher Education Minister R V Deshpande said implementing the court direction would have had huge financial implication running into hundreds of crores of rupees on the government. In the interest of financial discipline of the state exchequer, the government has now decided to enact a separate legislation in this regard, he said.
However, the teachers would get all benefits from the date of according grant-in-aid to their institutions, Deshpande said. The move of the government would affect around 25,000 teachers working in aided schools, PU, degree and technical colleges.
The minister also pointed that as per the rules under the Karnataka Education Act - 1983, non-grant period of service will not be counted, on admission to grant-in-aid for purpose of pay, leave, seniority and pension.
However, a section of the retired employees of aided institutions had approached the Karnataka High Court, challenging the government’s decision not to compute service rendered during non-grant period. The Court had directed the government to compute non-grant period.
The government had recently decided to take the ordinance route to enact the legislation. But Governor H R Bhardwaj refused to promulgate the ordinance, citing the Court judgement.
Earlier, Visvesvara Hegde Kageri (BJP) urged the government to invite representatives of teachers’ associations for talks before taking any decision.
The Assembly also passed the Karnataka Legislature Salaries, Pension and Allowances (Amendment) Bill 2014, with provision to provide pension to legislators even if their election is set aside by courts for technical reasons.
The Assembly passed the Karnataka Town and Country Planning (amendment) Bill 2014, that makes it mandatory for all planning authorities to prepare a report of its activities and submit them to the government.