IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT PATNA CWJC No 14659 of 2007 Sukhdeo Sinha, son of late Preman Singh, presently resident of Mohalla – South Postal Park, Road No 3B, Kankarbagh Colony, PS – Kankarbagh, Dist – Patna - Petitioner Versus 1 The State of Bihar 2 Commissioner-cum-Secretary, Department of Health, Medical Education & Indigenous Medicines, Government of Bihar, New Secretariat, Patna 3 Bihar State Board of Homoeopathic Medicines having its office in Anugrah Narayan Road, PO & PS – Kadamkuan, At & Dist – Patna through its Registrar 4 President, Bihar State Board of Homoeopathic Medicines, Anugrah Narayan Road, PO – Kadamkuan, Patna 5 Sri A K Ghosh, son of not known to petitioner, at present Registrar, Bihar State Board of Homoeopathic Medicines, Anugrah Narayan Road, PO & PS – Kadamkuan, Patna - Respondents ----------- 5 06.01.2009 The petitioner retired officiating as a Head Clerk from the Bihar State Board of Homoeopathic Medicine on 30.11.1991. He has filed the present writ application claiming his retrial dues on basis of the last pay drawn and subject to revision of pay for the purposes of retiral dues. It may be noticed that the petitioner had earlier come to this Court in CWJC No 1198 of 2006 which was disposed of by judgment dated 24.08.2006 after hearing all the parties including the Board and the State. This Court, in the said judgment, held that financial crisis of the Board was no reason to deny wages and/or retiral benefits to its employees as the Board was a statutory Board constituted under the Act of the Legislature and, thus, an organ of the State itself. The petitioner has now been paid his retiral dues but when it came to paying the same at revised pay scales, the stand in the counter affidavit is taken by the Board that it is going through financial crisis and, as such, is not paying retiral dues to any of its employees on the revised pay scale. 2 Fortunately, the stand of the Board is not that it has no legal liability to pay revised pay scale. The legal liability to pay revised pay scale, if I may say so, stands admitted but it is sought to be postponed on grounds of financial crisis. An attempt has been made, in course of argument, to argue that the promotion granted to the petitioner was not regular and there was an audit objection by the Accountant General in that regard. Though the petitioner states that the objection was withdrawn which fact is also noticed in the earlier writ proceedings, suffice to say that petitioner is not claiming any promotion but is claiming retiral benefits on basis of last pay drawn. The last pay drawn is not in dispute. Thus, I find that the Board is under a legal obligation to pay retiral dues to the petitioner on basis of the last pay drawn and the same is subject to revision as per the recommendation of the Pay Revision Committee in manner similar to the State Government servants. So far as the capacity to pay is concerned, in the earlier writ proceedings itself, this Court had held that the Board is constituted by the State Legislature by a Legislative Act and is, as such, a State organ and it cannot escape the liability to pay. This Court had earlier observed in the said judgment that if it is unable to pay its employees then it should sell off its assets to discharge its legal liability to its employees. Here, I may usefully refer to the decision rendered in the case of Kapila Hingorani -Versus- State of Bihar since reported in 2003 (3) PLJR (SC) 17 wherein the Apex Court has clearly analyzed the law in this regard and held the State liable for the dues of employees of statutory Corporations and Boards created by it. 3 In that view of the matter, I have no option but to direct that the petitioner is entitled to receive his retiral dues at the revised pay scales which should be calculated by the Board within a period of one month from the date of production of a copy of this order before the Registrar of the Board who would then see that the amount is paid to the petitioner within a period of one month thereafter. In case funds are not available with the Board then Board must make a requisition thereof to the Commissioner-cum-Secretary, Department of Health, Medical Education & Indigenous Medicine, Government of Bihar, New Secretariat, Patna who is respondent No 2 in this case who shall, within one month of the requisition being received, ensure that payments are made to the petitioner in full as per judgment of this Court. At the cost of repetition, I may clarify that calculation of retiral dues of the petitioner shall be made on basis of the last pay drawn by the petitioner and the retiral dues would be subject to revision in accordance with the applicable rules for revision of pay scale and arrears accordingly calculated to be paid to the petitioner. This disposes of the writ application finally. Let a copy of this order be given to the learned counsel for the Homoeopathic Board. M.E.H./ (Navaniti Prasad Singh)