E S I S Vs. HASUMATI DEVENDRA MAKWANA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The respondent, a Staff Nurse - a Class-Ill servant serving at Bapunagar General Hospital, which is under the control of the Employees State Insurance Scheme, filed the suit for a declaration that the stoppage of House Rent Allowance, which she was earlier getting, effected by the appellants is illegal. She prayed for a direction to the appellants to resume paying her House Rent Allowance (for short "H. R. A.") with retrospective effect. She also prayed for an injunction restraining the appellants from effecting from her, recovery of Rs. 5,207.55 ps. which she had already been paid as H. R. A. in past.

(2.) The suit of the respondent having been decreed, the appellants are in appeal.

(3.) The facts are few and undisputed. The respondent, as said above, is a Class-III female Staff Nurse serving at Bapunagar General Hospital. Her husband is also a Government servant, he being an Officer in the Regional Transport Office under the control of the Director of Transport. Both of them are residing in a Government quarter allotted to the husband of the respondent. The husband of the respondent is paying to the Government rent at the rate of Rs. 28.42 ps. per month, that being the standard rent as per the relevant rules applicable to him. Even in that state of affairs, in past, the appellants were paying to the respondent H. R. A. at the prescribed rate. However, the Auditors raised objections pursuant to which the appellants stopped paying H. R. A. to the respondent, and ordered the respondent to repay to them Rs. 5,207.55 ps. being the total of the amounts paid by the appellants to the respondent, in past under the head of H. R. A.