A small irrigation project under the rural job scheme at a Dhanbad village. (File picture)

New Delhi, Nov. 8: The Narendra Modi government is continuing its predecessor’s legal battle against having to match its rural job scheme wages to the states’ minimum agricultural wage rates.

The Union rural development ministry is set to move a curative petition challenging a Supreme Court verdict that had dismissed a UPA government appeal against a Karnataka High Court judgment in a wage case.

In September 2011, on an NGO’s petition, the high court had asked the Centre to pay arrears to rural job scheme workers in Karnataka who had been paid at rates lower than the state’s minimum wage since 2008.

Faced with a burden of hundreds of crores of rupees, the Centre appealed in the apex court, Union rural development secretary L.C. Goyal told The Telegraph.

But the challenge was defeated on July 11 this year and the review petition moved by the Modi government was rejected last week, leaving a curative petition as the last option.

Since 2008, the Centre has been fixing the job scheme wage rate for each state based on that particular state’s Consumer Price Index for Agricultural Labourer. The rate is revised every fiscal year.

However, the states are free to fix their minimum wages on whichever criteria they want, and many states have stipulated cut-offs higher than the rural job scheme’s.

Karnataka’s minimum wages outstripped the job scheme’s in 2008, two years after the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act came into force.

Although the apex court judgment is silent on whether arrears need to be paid also in the other states whose minimum wages are higher than the job scheme rates, the Centre fears the ruling will set a precedent.

The Centre’s argument is that if it were to adopt the states’ minimum wages for the rural job scheme, it would selectively benefit the scheme’s workers in states that periodically increase their minimum wages and hurt workers in states that do not.

However, the apex court has so far not touched on this argument of “arbitrariness”. Its July verdict said that since the job scheme’s latest wage rate (effective from April 1 this year) was higher than Karnataka’s existing minimum wage, the Centre must pay the arrears from 2008 till March 31, 2014.

“In principle, the government is opposed to it,” Goyal said. “We plan to file a curative petition before a larger bench very soon.”

Since the July verdict, however, Karnataka has revised its minimum wage again, raising it above the rural job scheme’s rate for the state, lawyer Vrinda Grover told this newspaper.

But the apex court order limiting the arrears payment till March 31 this year will stand unless it passes another ruling revising the date, she said.

From Rs 82 per day in 2009, the job scheme wage for Karnataka has risen to Rs 191. It’s Rs 169 in Bengal, where the minimum wage is 193.

Last year, the UPA government appointed a committee headed by economist Mahendra Dev to examine the job scheme’s wage rates. It handed in its report recently, saying the wage for any state cannot be lower than the state’s minimum wage.

“The government has not taken a view on the report,” Goyal said.