Delhi High Court verdict on minimum wage will put workers under financial stress, says Arvind Kejriwal

New Delhi: A day after the Delhi High Court quashed the state government’s notification on minimum wages, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday said the ruling will put a huge financial stress on workers. “Large number of daily wage earners in Delhi started getting increased wages of Rs 13,500 per month instead of Rs 9,500 for more than a year. With HC judgement, suddenly, their wages will be reduced. They will be put under huge financial stress. A huge setback for them,” Kejriwal said in a series of tweets. [caption id=“attachment_4716701” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File photo of Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal. PTI[/caption] The court on Saturday quashed two notifications issued by the Kejriwal government in 2017, one for revision of minimum wages for all scheduled employments and the other for setting up of an advisory panel for the purpose. The Chief Minister claimed that some employers are, in the wake of the High Court verdict, planning to recover the increased wages which they had paid for the last one year. “If that starts happening, it will bring untold miseries to the poor,” Kejriwal tweeted. In its verdict, the court observed that the committee’s recommendations and the Delhi government’s notifications had completely ignored the vital and critical aspects that had a material bearing on the issue. The High Court order came on several Public Interest Litigation (PIL) petitions including the one filed by Social Jurist, a civil rights group, which had pleaded that the hike in wages was unreasonably low and as such violated the workers’ fundamental right to life.