President Pranab Mukherjee has annulled his own order on continuation of Hill Areas Special Allowances (HASA) being given to teaching and non-teaching staff of the North-Eastern Hills University (NEHU).
The HASA is an allowance that NEHU employees enjoy as part of their salary by virtue of a University Ordinance (OE3), approved by the President of India. The NEHU employees are paid an allowance of 12.5 per cent of the basic pay. The Ordinance further states that this allowance is to be paid in addition to the pay in the respective scales and such other allowances as may be sanctioned by the University Grants Commission (UGC) from time to time.
Earlier, rejecting the Ministry of Human Resources Development decision to revoke the HASA after implementation of Sixth Pay Commission in which special allowance was made part of the salary, the President had allowed it continuing, using his discretionary powers as ‘visitor’ of the Central University.
Meanwhile, the issue reached the Ministry of Finance which favoured its withdrawal of HASA and endorsed the view point of the HRD Ministry. When HRD Ministry and Ministry of Finance, recommended withdrawal of this special allowance, the President has decided to annul his own order.
The Ministry had issued Guidelines in October 2008, extending the recommendations of the Sixth Central Pay Commission (SCPC) to autonomous organisations, statutory bodies etc. set up by and funded/controlled by the Central Government. The Guidelines inter alia stipulated that “It would be necessary to ensure that the final package of benefits proposed to be extended to the employees of autonomous organisations/ statutory bodies is not more beneficial than that admissible to the corresponding categories of the employees of the Central Government.”
The Ministry has been writing to the University to revoke the payment of HASA as NEHU employees are already paid special duty allowance of 12.5 per cent of the basic pay which is paid to all the Central employees as part of the salary under the Sixth Pay Commission.
NEHU while implementing the recommendations of SCPC started paying SDA to all its employees, from September 1, 2008 in addition to HASA. UGC, on noticing the payment of both HASA and SDA, directed NEHU in March and September 2009 to discontinue payment of HASA. Meanwhile, MHRD directed (August 2009) UGC to recover the amounts paid from NEHU from September 2008 towards HASA as the employees were entitled to SDA only.
UGC while sanctioning payment of 60 per cent of the pay revision arrears, again directed NEHU to withdraw payment of HASA (October 2009). In 2009, the Executive Council (EC) of NEHU under the Chairmanship of the then Vice Chancellor, Professor P Tandon, had taken a decision to stop payment of HASA in response to directive from the MHRD. However, despite the directives of the UGC/MHRD, NEHU continued with the payment of HASA along with the SDA to its employees as a result of which the UGC in March 2011, withheld Rs 2 crore from its non-plan grants to NEHU.