Amid a mounting confrontation with nearly 7.50 lakh government employees and pensioners, the Punjab Government on Thursday made a fresh attempt to defuse the situation, deputing three senior Cabinet ministers to reach out to the protesting workforce while strongly defending its record on salaries, dearness allowance (DA) and arrears.Punjab Finance Minister Harpal Singh Cheema, Industry and Renewable Energy Minister Aman Arora and Social Security Minister Dr Baljit Kaur jointly addressed the media, asserting that the government was ready to sit across the table with employees and pensioners to resolve their grievances.The ministers’ outreach comes days after government employees observed a mass casual leave on August 27 over demands including payment of pending DA arrears, with the government subsequently directing departments to issue show-cause notices to the participants.This also comes days before the second mass casual leave protest announced for September 8 and after a Special Leave Petition (SLP) was filed in the Supreme Court against the Punjab and Haryana High Court order asking the state government to release the pending DA dues of employees and pensioners.Cheema said Punjab was spending 51 per cent of its revenue on salaries and pensions, the highest among states, against an all-India average of 38 per cent. He said the state’s own tax revenue was considerably lower than the national average, making the expenditure particularly significant.He said the state had increased DA by 14 percentage points in three instalments since 2022 — from 28 per cent to 34 per cent in October 2022, to 38 per cent in December 2023 and to 42 per cent in November 2024.The Finance Minister said the Rs 14,191-crore liability on account of DA arrears was inherited from previous governments, including the Congress and SAD-BJP regimes.“We did not create this liability. We inherited it,” Cheema said, adding that the Mann government had submitted a liquidation plan which was accepted by the court and was being implemented. He claimed that more than Rs 4,500 crore had already been released to employees and pensioners against the inherited liability.“No past government ever committed to pay the DA arrears. We are the only government which committed to paying the past arrears,” he said, adding that payments were being made in monthly instalments.Taking on the BJP over allegations that Punjab was violating the principle of equality under Article 14 by not matching Central Government DA, the minister asked why similar questions were not being raised about BJP-ruled states like Haryana and Gujarat.“If you say we are violating Article 14, what is happening in Haryana and Gujarat? Are you not violating this provision of law there?” he asked.He further claimed that Haryana employees received around 13 per cent less salary than their Punjab counterparts and challenged the BJP to demand parity for Haryana employees with Punjab.Cheema said he was scheduled to meet representatives of 10 employee unions on Thursday and reiterated that the government was willing to hold discussions.On the action against employees who remained absent on August 27, he said the government was proceeding against “illegal absenteeism” in accordance with the law.The Finance Minister said Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann had made it clear that employees could not simultaneously be on strike and hold talks with the government.Dr Baljit Kaur said the relevant rules had been framed in 2021 and the state was paying DA in accordance with them. She said there was no provision under the state rules making it mandatory for Punjab to pay DA at the same rate as the Central Government.Arora, meanwhile, made an appeal to employees and pensioners, describing them as the “backbone of the government”. However, he alleged that the workforce was being used as a political tool by opposition parties.Referring to the implementation of the Pay Commission in 2016-17, Arora said neither the SAD-BJP government nor the Congress government had adequately addressed the DA issue at the time. He accused the Congress of making commitments to employees and subsequently “stabbing them in the back”.Arora said the government was committed to resolving pay anomalies where Punjab employees were drawing less than their counterparts under Central Government scales. He said paying DA at the required levels entailed an annual expenditure of around Rs 6,500 crore, which, he argued, could otherwise be utilised for schools, healthcare and infrastructure.