The Telangana government on Thursday promulgated an ordinance to defer payment of salaries and pensions to the government employees even as the case will be heard in the High Court on June 17.

The KCR government had promulgated the Telangana Disaster and Public Health Emergency (Special Provisions) Ordinance 2020 that enables it to defer payments of monthly salaries, pension or remuneration to employees, pensioners. The government can put off the payments of salaries and pensions to 50 per cent as per the ordinance.

It may be noted that the KCR government had slashed salaries of the government employees by 50% and pensions by 75% after the Covid-19 lockdown was imposed in March last week. The Ordinance was promulgated after the state government employees and pensioners associations filed a petition in the High Court against the deferment of salaries and pensions. The Telangana High Court had earlier directed the state government to file an affidavit and questioned the government’s rationale behind slashing the salaries and  pensions.

The ordinance will be applicable to all the institutions and statutory bodies that are being controlled by the state government such as universities, colleges, schools and other government institutions.  As per the ordinance, the deferred amount should be payable in six months from the date of deferment