By Diksha-
In a plea by the National Association of Blind, the Bombay High Court today declared the BMC’s decision to withhold monetary benefits of its physically disabled employees during the Covid-19 pandemic as illegal.
A two-Judge Bench comprising Justices Dipankar Datta and GS Kulkarni told the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to release the due monetary benefits to its employees in two instalments.
The first instalment is to be paid before Diwali and the next 45 days later.
The BMC had issued a notice of denial of monetary benefits to absent employees from retrospective effect which had been challenged as arbitrary by the petitioner.
Opining that the BMC should have followed the Centre and State Government circulars that exempted physically disabled from working during the pandemic, the Court said,
“The Corporation ought to have avoided creating a situation where the physically disabled employees are not to be worse off in these unimaginably hard times and left without pay, if they had no leave to their credit.”
The Court further commented that the BMC is not a private organisation that is working for earning profits.
The Hon’ble Court also rejected BMC’s plea for stay on the operation of the judgment.