A day after the Punjab and Haryana High Court directed Punjab to clear pending dearness allowance (DA) dues of its 7.5 lakh employees and pensioners, the Aam Aadmi Party government on Tuesday said its legal team was exploring remedies, including filing an appeal before the Supreme Court.At the same time, the government said it was committed to paying all “constitutionally and legally valid” dues. The High Court order, if implemented, will cost the state exchequer Rs 20,000 crore.Addressing mediapersons, Finance Minister Harpal Singh Cheema said “certain constitutional benchmarks and judicial precedents appeared to have been overlooked in the court order”.“The government is surprised by the order as the state is already following a High Court-approved liquidation plan to clear dues amounting to Rs 14,191 crore,” he said.Moreover, the Punjab Government was paying some of the highest pay scales in the country, surpassing even the Centre in several categories, Cheema said.“When the Sixth Punjab Pay Commission was announced in 2016, the Akali Dal-BJP alliance was in power and it delayed its implementation. It was only in 2021, just before the Assembly elections were announced, that the then Congress government announced its implementation. However, the government froze the DA arrears due from January 2016 to July 2021 and only paid the higher pay grades,” he said.Cheema explained that the arrangement created a liability of Rs 14,191 crore. After several employees approached the court, the AAP government, which had assumed power then, submitted a liquidation plan to clear the dues. “In 2024-25, we cleared the dues of all pensioners above 85 years. In 2025-26, we cleared dues of pensioners above 75 years. In the current year, we have started clearing the dues of the remaining pensioners and employees. Nearly Rs 6,000 crore of the arrears have already been disbursed,” he said.The minister said the government had told the High Court that Punjab could either give the higher salaries as recommended by the pay commission or give higher DA on the central pattern.Cheema also said it was the previous Congress government that had decided in 2020 that newly recruited employees would be inducted under the Central Pay Commission guidelines. He said despite inheriting a heavy debt burden, the AAP regime remained “committed to resolving all financial liabilities in a systematic and transparent manner”.