Punjab tells the Supreme Court it cannot pay Rs 14,191 crore of DA arrears in 15 days

The Punjab government reached the Supreme Court on 1 September to stop a high court clock. On 3 August the Punjab and Haryana High Court told the state to clear pending dearness allowance and dearness relief within a fortnight, at the rates paid to All India Service officers serving in Punjab, and to add 6 percent simple interest if it missed the date.

The Additional Chief Secretary, Finance, has filed a special leave petition, listed as Diary No. 53830/2026. The petition asks for a stay on the August judgment and on any contempt that could follow. It says the admitted arrears are about Rs 14,191 crore and that “compliance within the time allowed is not lawfully possible.”

How the bill was built

A Cabinet sub-committee produced a liquidation plan that the Council of Ministers approved on 13 February 2025. The plan spread revised pay and pension arrears from 1 January 2016 to 30 June 2021, and DA/DR arrears from 1 July 2021 to 31 March 2024, across five financial years through 2028-29. Pensioners over 85 were to be paid in two instalments. Younger pensioners were stretched to 12.

The high court quashed that plan as a violation of Article 14 and blocked what it called unproductive spending until the dues were cleared. The state’s SLP says the August order also captures the live gap between the 42 percent DA already on the books and a figure near 60 percent, and demands the whole stack in 14 days.

Against a revised salary and pension outgo of about Rs 58,064 crore in FY 2025-26, Rs 14,191 crore is close to three months of the entire wage-and-pension bill. That is the arithmetic the finance department wants the Supreme Court to look at before a contempt bench does.

The employees are already in the building

Unions have filed a caveat in the Supreme Court so they will be heard before any stay. A separate contempt petition against the state is listed before the high court on 27 September. If the Supreme Court does not pause the August order, that listing becomes the next enforcement date.

The legal fight sits on a known constitutional seam. Courts have said states cannot sit on DA once they accept a pay-commission pattern. States have said a single-year cash call of this size collides with the Appropriation Act and with other statutory payouts. Punjab is asking the Supreme Court to treat a fortnight as an impossible instruction rather than a moral one.

What a stay would and would not do

A stay would keep the five-year plan in political play and keep cash in the treasury through the festive quarter. It would not erase the arrears. It would not stop the 27 September contempt hearing unless the Supreme Court says so. It would not change the high court’s finding that a staggered plan treated pensioners unequally.

If the stay is refused, Bhagwant Mann’s government has to find a sum that is larger than many departments’ annual budgets, in days, or accept interest and possible contempt. That is why the SLP was filed on a Tuesday evening rather than after the next cabinet.