Employer’s Error, Employee’s Joy

Hyderabad: Imagine, your bank account being credited with more than ten times your monthly salary! Not for one month but for eight straight months.

A pensioner, Lakshman, has been getting Rs. 3,32,000 since eight months to his account. This despite his actual pension being Rs 32,000. While it is not clear whether it was a technical or human error, the origin of the mistake took place about eight months ago. At that time, the government planned to revise the pay of 1998 batch employees. Lakshman, who was a 1998 batch employee of the state government got qualified for the pay revision. His pension got revised to Rs. 32,000. However, instead of Rs. 32,000 an amount of Rs 3,32,000 started crediting to his account. That brought the total excess amount to Rs. 24 lakh at the rate of Rs. 3 lakh for eight months.

Rs. 24 lakh was credited to the pensioner’s account over an eight month period.

The error was discovered, recently, by officials of Directorate of Treasuries. They promptly issued a memo to the District Treasury who inturn pulled-up the official concerned - Amarender - and his supervisor Durga Prasad. They immediately contacted Lakshman, who besides acknowledging the excess amount also stated that he made a fixed deposit of Rs. 21 lakh while Rs. 3 lakh got deducted as income tax. Dismayed, the officials along with Lakshman reached the bank and through a challan got the Rs. 21 lakh deposited back to the state treasury. The District Treasury officials have written to the Income Tax department to get back the remaining Rs. 3 lakh.

In a strange coincidence, the official concerned Amarender retired on Saturday. A senior official, involved with the investigation, gave a clean chit to Amarender stating a technical glitch caused the “error”. Amarender, meanwhile, was given a grand farewell by his colleagues.