Will settle Rs 1136 cr dues to retired TNSTC employees:TN govt

The Tamil Nadu government today informed the Madras High Court that it would settle the dues of Rs 1,136 crores to retired Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation (TNSTC) employees by October 7.
An undertaking to this effect was given by Advocate General Vijay Narayan, representing the state government, to a division bench of Justices S Manikumar and M Govindaraj.
When the matter came up today, the AG also submitted that with regard to the settlement of dues worth around Rs 5000 crores to the serving employees, submitted that the scheme of payment will also be submitted on October 7.
The bench recorded the submission and posted the matter to October 21.

The matter was taken up as Suo Motu PIL by the court based on a post card sent by a retired employee of the corporation from Madurai to a division bench of Justices MV Muralidharan and N Seshasayee at the court's Madurai Bench in May last year.
Justice Muralidaran had directed the High Court Registry to treat the post card sent by R Mayandi Servai as a suo motu public interest litigation petition which was then transferred to theprincipal seat of the High Court in Chennai.

In his letter, Servai had claimed that his benefits had not been settled even after 24 years since his superannuation and that hundreds of other retired employees too were facing a similar situation.

He had accused the judges of having passed a harsh order against the striking TNSTC employees without knowing the ground situation and the government's failure to honour its statutory liabilities.
Earlier the bench had directed the TNSTC employees, who were then on strike, to return to work forthwith or face action under the Essential Services Maintenance Act of 1968.
The employees had sought among other benefits settlement of pending retirement benefits and payment of operational deficit to transport corporations.