HC query on cut in prisoners’ salary

SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

Notices issued on a PIL petition filed by Madurai-based activist K.R. Raja

The Madras High Court Bench here on Monday wanted to know from the State Government why convicts lodged in prisons were not being paid as per the Minimum Wages Act, 1948, and whether it was justified in deducting 50% of the wages earned by them through hard labour towards expenses incurred by the State for their upkeep.

Justices K.K. Sasidharan and G.R. Swaminathan issued notices to the Home Secretary as well as the Additional Director General of Police (Prisons) after passing a detailed order in which they recalled that the Supreme Court had on December 23, 1996 held that a substantial amount of prisoners’ wages could not be deducted for their upkeep.

The order was passed on a public interest litigation petition filed by Madurai-based activist K.R. Raja who urged the court to declare as illegal Rule 481 of the Tamil Nadu Prison Rules, 1983, in so far as it required deduction of 50% prisoners’ salary towards their upkeep and 20% towards payment of compensation to victims of crime.

Puducherry paid more

Arguing the case on behalf of the petitioner, his counsel R. Alagumani claimed that skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled prisoners in the State were paid just Rs. 100, Rs. 80 and Rs. 60 a day respectively though the Union Territory of Puducherry was paying them at the rate of Rs. 180, Rs. 160 and Rs. 150 a day for the same kind of jobs.

In his affidavit, the petitioner had stated that most of the convicts languishing in the State prisons were those who had murdered their spouses in a spurt of anger and therefore it was essential to pay them a reasonable amount of money so that their children, living without their parents, could be taken care of and educated well. He also claimed that while replying to an application under the Right to Information Act, 2005, the Superintendent of Palayamkottai Central Prison in Tirunelveli had stated that Rs. 66.83 lakh was collected from the prisoners’ salaries between 2000 and 2013, and the amount was kept idle without being distributed to the victims of crime.