Court orders payment of allowance to 13 job card holders
Source: Hueiyen News Service
Imphal, April 01 2011:
Yet another show cause notice (returnable within four weeks time) has been issued by the Gauhati High Court, Imphal Bench against the non-payment of unemployment allowances to 13 job card holders by the Imphal East MGNREGS authority.
Earlier, on March 30 , the same court had issued a notice of motion to authority of the MGNREGS authority in Imphal West district for non-payment of unemployment allowances to 14 job card holders.
The court issued the notice of motion today after hearing a joint writ petition filed by 13 job card holders of Uchekon Nongchup Gram Panchayat alleging that despite the fact that the Imphal MGNREGS Ombudsman had directed award of unemployment allowances to the 13 job card holders, they have been deprived of getting the same by the Programme Officer of Imphal East MGNREGS.
The 13 job card holders of had submitted separate applications for work to the authority of the Uchekon Nongchup Gram Panchayat for providing employment under the MGNREGS on December 24, 2010 .
However, the authority failed to provide jobs to them within the stipulated period and as such they had approached the panchayat secretary concerned on January 15, 2011 submitting separate applications, seeking unemployment allowances.
When the authority failed to pay such allowances, they approached the Imphal East MGNREGS Ombudsman for taking up necessary action so as to enable them to get their employment allowances.
Consequently, on February 14 2011, the Ombudsman disposed the joint complaint by directing the programme officer concerned to pay unemployment allowances to the 13 applicants.
When the programme officer failed to translate into work the directive of the Ombudsman, the 14 job card holders filed a writ petition to the Gauhati High Court, Imphal bench under the initiative of the Human Rights Law Network, Manipur.
In the petition, they alleged that the non-clearance of the allowances was tantamount to violation of the rights to life of the job card holders enshrined in Article 21 of the Indian Constitution.
They further alleged that the programme officer willfully dishonoured the directive of the Ombudsman.