Yet again, the YCP Government could not pay salaries in the first four days of April month. The last three days are holidays, which is why the employees are not greatly worried about the delay. What is their major concern now is the rumour that the Government may not be able to pay the salaries for another few days. There are also concerns that much more delay would be caused in the payments to pensioners.

Normally, even if there are holidays in the first few days of the month, the Government must not have any problem to pay salaries on some working day immediately available. It is because the salary disbursement process begins on the 25th of the preceding month itself. Rumours doing rounds in the employees circles are that the Jagan regime is under more pressure than expected to meet the expenditure on the direct cash benefit programmes.

There are over 5 lakh Government employees and 3.5 pensioners. For their salaries, the Government may need not less than Rs. 5,000 Cr. Besides this, over 20 months arrears have to be paid to the pensioners.

Doubtless to say, the declined revenue and exorbitantly higher expenditure on welfare are creating increasingly difficult situations for the Government to pay salaries in time. The crisis is expected to become deeper in the coming months.