BALVEER SINGH YADAV Vs. STATE OF U P

JUDGEMENT

(1.) HEARD learned Counsel for the petitioner, and learned Standing Counsel.

(2.) THE petitioner is serving as Head Muharrir as a confirmed employee of Nagar Panchayat, Moth, District Jhansi. By this writ petition, he has prayed for a direction to State of U.P. through Director, Local Bodies, Lucknow and Chairman, Nagar Panchayat Moth, District Jhansi to pay the entire arrears of salary and current salary to the petitioners which is due to her. The petitioner and other similarly situate employees were not paid salary from March 1997. This Court had made several attempts to persuade the respondents to clear the arrears. Sri K.K. Upadhayay, Director of Local Bodies, Allahabad was directed to file counter -affidavit. His personal presence was exempted on 29 -3 -2004 as he was on Election Duty and an mandamus was issued directing the respondents to pay the salary to the petitioner beginning from 1 -3 -2004. The question of payment of salary from the funds allocated to the Nagar Panchayat was required to be considered on the date of hearing.

(3.) SRI K.K. Upadhyay, Director, Local Bodies, U.P. has filed a short counter -affidavit on behalf of State Government. He submits that with the 74th Amendment of the Constitution of India, the Nagar Panchayats have become autonomous institutions. The State Finance Commission grants financial assistance to Nagar Panchayats for development works as per ratio of the population and the area of Nagar Panchayats. As per recommendations of State Finance Commissioner 7% of the total tax recovered by the State Government is provided to the local bodies, out of which 3.12% is given to Nagar Nigam, 3.12% to the 195 Nagar Palika Parishads and the rest 0.76% to the 417 Nagar Panchayats. This proportion has been fixed considering the ratio of population and the area of the local body. The Nagar Panchayat, Moth was given 13.47 lakhs in the year 2001 -02, Rs. 14.01 lakhs in the year 2002 -03, and Rs. 11.38 lakhs in the year 2003 -04 from outside of the allocation made by the State Finance Commission. This amount is given as grant for development work.