The North Delhi Municipal Corporation on Tuesday filed a status report in the Delhi High Court informing it that salaries of March and April months of all resident doctors in hospitals run by the civic body have been paid.
The corporation also said in its report that salary for the month of March of all of its regular doctors have also been paid. It claimed that the Delhi government was liable to pay an amount of Rs 37.50 crore under the Health Plan in the first quarter.
"However, the Delhi government is yet to release this amount. Thus, due to non-release of the requisite amounts by the Delhi government, the North DMC has been unable to release the salary of the doctors," the civic body said in its report.
The report was filed pursuant to the high court's June 12 direction to the corporation to pay by June 19 the salary for March to the resident doctors in its six hospitals, including Kasturba Gandhi and Hindu Rao.
A bench of Chief Justice DN Patel and Justice Prateek Jalan had also asked the Delhi government to release funds to North DMC so that it can pay the April salary of the resident doctors of its hospitals by June 24.
The order had come in a PIL initiated by the court based on news reports that doctors of Kasturba Gandhi Hospital have threatened to resign as they have not been paid salaries since March this year.
The news reports also stated that recently doctors of North MCD-run Hindu Rao hospital had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi over non-payment of their salaries for the months of March, April and May.
The Delhi government also filed a status report on Tuesday stating that it has released Rs 8 crore to the corporation, as directed by the court, for payment of the April salary of the resident doctors.
It further said that paying salaries of the doctors and other employees of the corporation was the sole responsibility of the civic body and the Delhi government only releases funds which it is obliged to as per budget estimate of the financial year.
The Delhi Government said that the corporations have to manage their financial affairs from the revenue they earn from property tax, transfer duty, toll tax, advertisements, parking fees, conversion charges, etc.
It said that due to COVID-19, the Delhi government was likely to face a financial burden of around Rs 1,855 crore for expenditure incurred on providing food, dry ration, shelter to labourers, migrants and homeless, creating isolation facilities, etc.
It further said that there has been a sharp decline in its revenue collection and therefore, the share of the corporations will also undergo a revision proportionately.
The Delhi government also said that the first installment of the funds allocated for the north and south MCDs under the basic tax assignment have been released to them by the Urban development department. It said Rs 212.53 crore to north MCD and Rs 112.62 to south MCD has been already released.
It further claimed that its Education department has already released Rs 147.50 crore to north MCD, Rs 97.50 crore to south MCD and Rs 75 crore to east MCD as grant in aid for the current financial year.
Besides that, its revenue department has released Rs 33.65 crore to north MCD, Rs 48.02 crore to south MCD and Rs 11.40 crore to east MCD in the current financial year, the Delhi government said in its report.
The north MCD stated in its report that there are a total of 502 regular doctors employed by it and 540 resident doctors working in its hospitals and the total liability of their salaries comes to Rs 18.57 crore per month.
"It is due to the grave financial constraints being faced by the answering respondent due to non-release of requisite grant-in-aid by Delhi government, that it is unable to discharge its onus of releasing salaries to its employees.
"It is with great anguish and distress that the answering respondent (north MCD) is unable to release salaries of its various categories of employees due to the financial constraints being faced by it, due to withholding of amounts under grant-in-aid by Delhi government," the civic body has said.
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