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Prakash Kumar Jena & Ors. vs The State of Odisha & Ors.

Civil Appeal · 2023 INSC 254Decided 17 Mar 2023
Civil Appeal No. 8836 of 2022
M.R. Shah · M.M. Sundresh · C.T. Ravikumar as the second judge

Background

Home Guards working in Odisha for 10-15 years sought a court direction to be paid a "Duty Call-up Allowance" (DCA) in line with an earlier Supreme Court ruling (Grah Rakshak, 2015) that required states to pay Home Guards a daily allowance equal to the minimum monthly pay of a regular police constable, divided across 30 days. Odisha's own Director General had recommended in 2016 that Home Guards be paid Rs. 533/day, but the state kept paying a lower, fixed amount instead (tied to what contractual constables earned). The High Court's Single Judge ordered payment of Rs. 533/day from 2016; the Division Bench upheld this rate but limited it to start only from January 2020. Both the Home Guards and the State of Odisha appealed to the Supreme Court: the Home Guards wanting the earlier 2016 start date restored, the State wanting the higher rate reduced altogether.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court rejected Odisha's argument that Home Guards should get only the fixed lump-sum paid to newly-recruited contractual constables, noting nearly all other states had already complied with the Grah Rakshak ruling by paying comparable higher rates, and that the state's own Director General had independently recommended the Rs. 533/day figure back in 2016. The Court confirmed the Rs. 533/day rate as correct and dismissed the State's appeal on that point. On the start date, the Court agreed the High Court gave no good reason for arbitrarily choosing January 2020, and that the entitlement should logically run from a much earlier date; but, balancing this against the very large cumulative financial burden on the state exchequer (roughly Rs. 189 crore/year), the Court fixed a middle-ground start date of 1 June 2018 (the date the Home Guards had originally filed their writ petition), rather than 2016.

Lesson Learnt

Even after the Supreme Court lays down a general legal entitlement (here, minimum pay parity for Home Guards), state governments do not get to simply ignore it or substitute their own lower figure, but when courts finally enforce it years later, they may still calibrate the exact starting date of financial liability by weighing the affected workers' rights against the practical scale of the burden on public funds.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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