Lagatar24 Desk
Ranchi: Secretariat assistants and private secretaries in Jharkhand have expressed strong discontent over the state government’s decision to recover additional payments previously made to them. Amid threats of protest, a recent Supreme Court verdict indicates that the government may not succeed in recovering these amounts, as the payments were not a result of employee misconduct.
The Jharkhand government had recently initiated proceedings to recover excess payments made to these employees. However, according to a Supreme Court decision, recovery of overpaid salaries due to employer miscalculation or misinterpretation of rules is not legally enforceable.
The Supreme Court bench comprising Justices P.S. Narasimha and Prashant Kumar Mishra delivered this ruling while hearing a petition filed by private secretaries working in Odisha civil courts. The petitioners challenged a recovery order issued 3 years after their retirement and 6 years after receiving the payments, demanding sums between Rs 20,000 to Rs 40,000.
The top court clarified that only amounts obtained through fraud or misrepresentation by employees can be legally recovered. If overpayment was caused by administrative error, recovery is not permissible.
In Jharkhand, the government had earlier withdrawn a 2019 cabinet resolution that revised pay structures for secretariat assistants and private secretaries appointed before 1996. The resolution had enabled salary hikes for the affected employees.
The withdrawal came after objections raised by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), who contended that two separate pay matrices cannot be implemented within a single pay revision framework. Following this, a high-level committee recommended canceling the resolution and recovering the excess payments.
Under the 2019 resolution, affected employees received between Rs 10 lakh and Rs 18 lakh in additional payments. The state is now attempting to recover these amounts, but the recent Supreme Court judgment casts serious doubt on the legal viability of such action.
