Visakhapatnam: The Andhra Pradesh High Court has served a contempt of court notice on the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) and co-respondents including the Union ministry of health and family welfare on pay revision.
This followed violation of the court order dated December 19, 2022 in WP No. 13824 of 2021.
The court said the respondent's apparent disregard of law was evident and there was a clear and categorical refusal to comply with the court order.
The issue arose from a petition filed by the AP state AIDS control employees union, representing more than 1,200 contractual employees across diverse cadres in Andhra Pradesh. The context was the temporal expansion of the National AIDS Control Programme (NACP) Phase IV, initially scheduled from 2012 to 2017 but having extended until 2021. Contractual employees in various cadres have not been given the promised pay revisions.
The petition was filed by Sudarthi Venu (president), P Venkatasubbaiah (general secretary) and Medikonda Jayakumar (district secretary), Chittoor. It alleged that NACO failed to uphold its commitment to periodic pay revisions for contractual workers.
The leaders pointed out that senior medical officers and medical officers in ART centers received two substantial pay revisions in January 2020 , other cadres were ignored.
In response, NACO stated that the revision of remuneration aligned with the beginning of a new phase of the programme. The union contended that the selective pay revision in 2020 disproportionately benefited one cadre, violating constitutional principles outlined in Articles 14, 16 and 21.
