Meeting to discuss pay of aided college employees

The government has announced that a  meeting of stakeholders will be convened to discuss salaries and related issues of employees in aided degree colleges.

An announcement to this effect was made by Higher Education Minister R V Deshpande in the Legislative Council, following apprehension expressed by the Opposition parties that lecturers of aided degree colleges will face cut in salaries, following the implementation of a legislation passed last year. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah will chair the meet.

Ganesh Karnik (BJP), Basavaraj Horatti (JD-S) said  4,500 lecturers in aided degree colleges will face huge salary cut if the provisions of the Karnataka Private Aided Educational Institutions Employees (Regulation of  Pay, Pension and Other Benefits) Act 2014, was implemented.

The bill had been passed to circumvent a High Court order that directed the government to pay salary benefits to teachers in aided institutions from the date of appointment instead of paying them the benefits from the date of grant in-aid to the institution.

Karnik said that the bill had been passed in the background that implementing the court direction would have had huge financial implication running into hundreds of crores of rupees on the government and the same would adversely affect financial discipline of the State Exchequer.

However, it now appeared that implementation of the provisions of the act would result in fitment of salaries resulting in huge pay cuts in salaries.