Madhya Pradesh High Court Rules Against Arbitrary Contract Wage Reduction

Hon’ble Madhya Pradesh High Court in Writ Petition No. 11632 of 2020, ruled that contract wages cannot be reduced arbitrarily or illegally upon delegation of work to a delegate, while considering a batch of petitions by employees who were initially engaged by the National Health Mission (“NHM”) for various subsidiary jobs. NHM had delegated the services of these employees to Rogi Kalyan Samiti (“RKS”) who subsequently deducted wages that had been initially agreed upon with NHM.

The court concluded that there cannot be any reduction of wages on delegation of work to RKS or sub-delegation of work to a contractor and therefore respondents have failed to make out a case for a reduction of wages for doing the same nature of work for the same duration in the hands of a delegate or a sub-delegatee.