“We make it clear that expenditure incurred by some of the state governments and Union Territories, particularly NCT of Delhi, on advertisements with the amount collected is not at all appropriate and the amount that has been spent by the NCT of Delhi and other UTs and states on advertisements should be returned to the accounts of the construction workers.” said the Supreme Court on August 21, 2015 and yet the States and Union Territories collected almost Rs 30,000 crore under the Building and Other Construction Workers’ Welfare Cess Act, 1996. Delhi government collected nearly Rs 1500 crore under this head and diverted almost 900 crore to build schools, hospitals, anganwadis etc.
The issue came to light recently when an application by National Campaign Committee for Central Legislation on Construction Labour through senior advocate Colin Gonsalves raised this issue before a bench headed by Justice Madan Lokur last week.
The Supreme Court has held Aam Aadmi Party answerable to the PIL filed by the NGO, which accuses the AAP of illegally siphoning 900 crore rupees from building construction workers’ welfare fund for other purposes.
In June last year the Union labour secretary had already written to the governments of all the states mentioning that it is illegal to spend money on building schools, training centres, labour shed-cum-night shelters, waiting halls and hostels among other things from the fund created through the construction cess. In spite of Supreme Court’s repeated orders and warnings from the centre the Delhi government approved allocations of Rs 100 crore for building schools, Rs 200 crore for opening hospitals and for health insurance cover, Rs 400 crore for opening Anganwadi and Rs 200 crore for setting up temporary accommodation halls, which violates Supreme Court’s order.
The NGO also pointed out that the workers were covered under ESI Act (Employees’ State Insurance), which enables them to enrol for a free treatment at ESI hospitals so the entire act of building hospitals for the workers was nothing but an eye-wash. The NGO also cited that the various departments of the government have a budget allocated to build schools, aangwadis, hospitals etc and therefore it is completely unnecessary to divert more funds from the construction cess fund.
The Supreme Court asked additional solicitor General Maninder Singh and counsel for state government to file response on the NGO’s allegations, the court has also asked senior advocate Vivek Tankha to help Nationla Legal Services Authority (NALSA) prepare a report on the implementation of the 1996 Act.
Further hearing in the matter will be held on February 17.
