AI generated imageNEW DELHI: The Patna high court, in a ruling on delayed salary dues, has directed the Bihar government to pay Rs 6.71 lakh in pending salary arrears to the family of a government employee. The case involved dues that remained unpaid for more than 20 years.What was the case about?Ramdeo Prasad, who worked as a dresser cum compounder at Government Polytechnic College in Gaya. He died while in service on April 24, 2003. However, his salary dues from July 1992 till April 22, 2003 were never fully released by the authorities. After his death, the employee's family continued pursuing the matter for years. His wife, who was reportedly a homemaker, also died in 2016 without receiving the pending amount. Eventually, their son Uday Kumar approached the court seeking the payment, as per a report by Economic Times.What did the Patna high court say?A Division Bench of Chief Justice Sangam Kumar Sahoo and Justice Harish Kumar ruled in favour of Uday Kumar and directed the Bihar government to clear the unpaid salary arrears amounting to Rs 6.71 lakh. The court acknowledged that the dues had remained unpaid for an extraordinarily long period and held that the family could not be denied rightful payments because of the administrative delay.Uday Kumar had also sought interest on the delayed amount along with litigation costs. On this point, the government appealed to the larger bench of the high court, arguing that since the payment had been missed earlier, it should not be required to pay interest spanning more than 20 years.The court restricted the interest component, holding that in cases involving delayed claims, interest on arrears should ordinarily be limited to the three years prior to the filing of the writ petition, rather than covering the entire period of delay.The bench further directed that interest at 6 per cent per annum would be payable from September 3, 2019 to September 3, 2022.The Division Bench of the Patna High Court relied on the Supreme Court judgments in Union of India v. Tarsem Singh (2008) and Rushibhai Jagdishchandra Pathak v. Bhavnagar Municipal Corporation (2022), and observed that as a consequence, high courts should restrict the consequential relief relating to arrears to the three years preceding the date of filing of the writ petition, according to Economic Times.