Mumbai: Even before the Maharashtra government could implement its 'five-day week' scheme for its employees, a petition has been filed in the Bombay High Court labelling the scheme to be illegal and discriminatory.
A Solapur-based activist petition claims the scheme discriminates among the government employees as not every department would be in a position to implement the scheme.
Activist Mahesh Gadekar has filed the petition through his counsel Vinod Sangvikar. The petition is likely to be mentioned before a bench led by Acting Chief Justice Bhushan Dharmadhikari, on Monday.
According to the petition, all government offices in Mumbai would be in a position to follow the new working hours but the same will not apply to government offices covered under the Factories Act and the Industrial Disputes Act and to those that are considered essential services or providers of such services, which include hospitals, dispensaries, police, jails, fire brigade, conservancy workers, educational institutes.
"Other employees deployed on water supply projects, too will not follow this scheme. So as a result, this scheme is discriminatory among the government employees themselves. It violates Article 14 (right to equality) of the Constitution of India," the plea reads.
The petition further highlights that the scheme, if implemented would deter the health of the government employees.
"Until today, the public servants were working six days a week and still there is a lot of pendency of files. So, the scenario after implementation of this scheme would almost increase," the plea reads.
It further states, "Already the government employees have a lot of holidays, half days, sick leaves etc. They have half an hour lunch break in afternoon which always turns into an hour followed by a tea break in the evening. So, there is no need to have a holiday on every Saturday because already they have holidays on every alternate Saturdays."
The plea accordingly seeks quashing and setting aside of the scheme and a direction to conduct audits of pending work of each department and each desk within time bound manner before implementation of the scheme.
