DA case in West Bengal is coming to a head

Dearness allowance (DA) is the extra money given to employees and pensioners to deal with rising prices.

- ASHOK K LAHIRI

In India, with a humble beginning during World War I, DA for government employees has, since Independence, become a rule rather than an exception. In the West Bengal DA case, the country eagerly awaits the Supreme Court's pronouncement on whether DA is a fundamental right of government employees.

A legal dispute on delays in payment of DA, festering since at least 2017 in the West Bengal Administrative Tribunal and High Court, has finally reached the Supreme Court in an appeal. The higher courts have rejected the claim that DA payments fall within the discretionary authority of the state government and that employees have no enforceable right. The government had pleaded that paying the claimed DA arrears would lead to financial disaster. In an interim order on May 16, 2025, the Supreme Court ordered the release of at least 25 per cent of the DA amount due and payable to all the employees within six weeks. One estimate puts this amount at ₹10,000 crore. The final order is awaited.

Two important questions: First, amidst a fiscal crisis, how is the West Bengal government going to find the ₹10,000 crore? Second, what issues, among many others, is the Supreme Court likely to take into account in its final order, when it considers the question of whether the right to DA is a fundamental one or not?

First, the backdrop. During the last few years of the 34-year-long Left rule, West Bengal Services (Revision of Pay and Allowances) Rules, 2009 (ROPA Rules, 2009) governed DA for government employees from January 1, 2006, with retrospective effect. With the Left government continuing to revise and pay DA to its large employee population at more or less the same time and rate as the central government, its DA bill was the highest of all states.