The bank message and the payslip do not agree
The credit lands and it is short. Not zero, which would at least be unambiguous, but short — a figure that sits somewhere under what the payslip for the same month says. Usually the first thought is that the bank has made a mistake. Then the payslip is read again, line by line, and the arithmetic is fine. The gap is real.
What tends to follow is a message to HR, a reply that mentions the cycle, and a month or two in which the shortfall shrinks and everyone behaves as though the matter has been sorted. Sometimes it has. Sometimes the next month is worse.
We only ever have one side of this. The employer may well say that the difference is a deduction it was entitled to make — provident fund, ESI, professional tax, tax deducted at source, recovery of an advance or a notice-period amount, or a variable component that it says never vested. Whether that is right turns on documents, not on who sounds more reasonable. Which is why the first useful thing anyone can do in this situation is not to write another email. It is to put the paper in order.
Employer not paying full salary — what can you actually do?
Salary is a debt. It arises from your contract of employment, and sometimes from a statute that fixes a floor or a deadline. When it is not paid in full, the law gives you more than one route, and the route that fits depends on facts about you and about your employer.
- Your monthly wage matters. The Payment of Wages Act, 1936 covers employees within a wage ceiling fixed under Section 1(6) — ₹24,000 a month at present for the establishments it covers, though notifications and the pending labour codes can change this. Above that ceiling, that Act is usually closed to you.
- Your duties matter. The Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 protects a "workman" as defined in Section 2(s). Managerial and supervisory roles above the prescribed wage ceiling fall outside that definition, which shuts the Labour Court door.
- Who your employer is matters. A private company, a proprietorship, a government department and a statutory body each send you down a different corridor.
- Deductions are lawful only if authorised — statutory deductions, or those permitted by the Act, by a settlement, or by the terms of your contract and standing orders where they apply. An unauthorised deduction is recoverable.
- Time is the quiet problem. A claim under the Payment of Wages Act must ordinarily be filed within twelve months, which is the shortest window of any of these routes.
Step one: reconcile the documents before you accuse anyone
Take the appointment letter and any revision letters, the payslip for each disputed month, and the bank statement showing what actually arrived. Put them side by side. Work out, for each month, the gross, the deductions shown, the net that should have come, and the net that came. That difference — not a general sense of being underpaid — is what any forum will ask you about.
Keep the emails and messages too, especially anything in which a figure was admitted or a date promised. An email that says "the balance will be released next month" is evidence of the debt, even if the money never came.
Route 1 — the Payment of Wages Authority
If you are within the wage ceiling, Section 15 of the Payment of Wages Act lets you apply to the prescribed authority for the wages deducted or delayed. The authority can order payment and also award compensation. Applications are ordinarily to be made within twelve months of the date the deduction was made or the wages fell due, but the authority has the power to condone delay for sufficient cause. The Act also lays down when wages must be paid — broadly, before the seventh day of the following month in smaller establishments and the tenth day in larger ones — so a delay of weeks is not the same thing as a delay of months.
This
This route is the cheapest of the lot, and by Indian standards it is fast — weeks to a few months where the employer does not drag it out. What it cannot do is hear a claim above the ceiling, or give you relief the Act does not provide.
Two practical points. The authority is constituted area-wise by the state government, so find the one for your district before drafting anything. And carry your own calculation on a single sheet, month by month, net due against net paid. Authorities deal with that sheet far better than with a narrative.
Route 2 — the Labour Court, for those who qualify as a workman
If you fall within the definition of "workman" under Section 2(s) of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, there are two doors. One is a reference of an industrial dispute, usually after conciliation before the Labour Commissioner fails. The other, and the one most people actually use, is an application under Section 33C(2) — a money claim, where the Labour Court computes the amount due to you and issues a recovery certificate. It is meant to be a summary exercise in arithmetic, not a trial of the employment relationship.
The catch is limitation. Whether a three-year rule applies to a 33C(2) application, and from which date it runs, is not uniform across High Courts. Some treat it as an execution-type proceeding free of limitation; others apply the residuary three-year period. If your arrears are old, this is the first thing to have looked at.
Who counts as a workman is decided by what you actually did, not by your designation on the letterhead. Someone called a "manager" who supervised nobody and had no power to hire or punish may still qualify; someone called an "executive" who ran a department and appraised staff will not. Courts look at the substance of the role.
Route 3 — a civil suit for the money
Above the ceiling and outside the workman definition, your claim is a contract claim. You sue for breach of the contract of employment, in the court with the pecuniary jurisdiction over the amount. Limitation is three years from the date each instalment fell due, which means older months can drop out of your claim if you wait.
Where the salary is fixed in a written contract — and an appointment letter is a written contract — Order XXXVII of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 allows a summary suit for a liquidated demand. That matters. In a summary suit the defendant must apply for leave to defend and show a triable defence; if leave is refused, you get a decree without a full trial. It is the difference between a case that resolves in a year and one that grinds on.
Small claims, below the state's pecuniary limit, go to the Court of Small Causes where one exists. Procedure there is looser and cheaper, and you may not need an advocate at all — though the drafting of the plaint still decides whether the case gets off the ground.
One warning. A civil suit is a claim for money. It will not get you your job back, it will not get you a promotion you say you were denied, and it will not get you a good reference. If what you want is to stay employed and be paid properly, the civil suit is the wrong instrument.
Route 4 — when part of the shortfall is criminal
Non-payment of salary, by itself, is a civil wrong. Courts have repeatedly said that a wage dispute dressed up as a criminal case adds nothing, and a complaint of cheating or criminal breach of trust over a plain salary shortfall will usually be closed. There are limited exceptions, and they turn on entrustment.
- Provident fund and ESI deducted but not deposited. That money was deducted from your wages and held for a statutory purpose. Where an employer deducts and does not deposit, the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation can determine the dues and recover them as arrears of land revenue, and penalties follow. Courts have treated deducted-but-not-deposited PF as entrustment, which is where criminal breach of trust under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (Section 316) becomes arguable.
- TDS deducted but not deposited. Not your loss in the same way, but a mismatch on your Form 26AS can cost you a refund. You can raise it with the income tax department directly.
- A cheque that bounced. If the salary was paid by cheque and it was dishonoured, Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881 has its own clock — a demand notice within thirty days of the dishonour memo, then a complaint within a month of the fifteen-day notice period running out. Miss the sequence and the remedy is gone.
- Failure of an order already passed. If the Payment of Wages authority or the Labour Court has already directed payment and it is not paid, the next step is recovery of that order, not a fresh complaint.
What if the company itself is in trouble
If your employer is a company that has stopped paying everyone and the directors have stopped answering, the question changes. A salary claim against a company that is insolvent may be pursued under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016. Whether employees' dues count as an "operational debt" for that purpose is not settled for every case, and the threshold for an operational creditor to file is ₹1 crore. Below that, the practical options are a civil decree and then execution. Where a company has been struck off or is in liquidation, recovery is slow and often partial. Say so plainly rather than file a claim that will sit.
If you are a government employee or work for a statutory body
Different corridor again. Central government servants go to the Central Administrative Tribunal under the Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985; state employees to the state tribunal where one exists. A civil suit for arrears of pay against the State is possible but subject to its own rules about when service matters can go to a civil court. Public sector bank and statutory corporation employees usually have an internal grievance machinery and, after that, a tribunal or writ petition. The Payment of Wages Act and the Industrial Disputes Act may or may not reach you.
Things that quietly kill these claims
- A full and final settlement receipt you signed. If you signed a discharge voucher while leaving, accepting a stated sum in full settlement, the claim becomes very hard. Pressure and financial need are not, by themselves, enough to undo it — though a settlement that is shown to be unconscionable or obtained by coercion has been set aside.
- Waiting. Two years of patient emailing can push the earliest months of your claim past limitation. The months you are least likely to recover are the oldest ones.
- Stopping work. Refusing to attend because you have not been paid lets the employer build a case about abandonment or misconduct. Arrears and attendance are separate fights, and it is worse to be fighting both.
- Losing the paper. Payslips stay on the employer's portal, which gets switched off the day you leave. Download every payslip, the appointment letter, the revision letters and the attendance record while you still have access.
- Emails with heat and no figures. A message that says "this is completely unacceptable and I will take legal action" proves nothing. A message that says "my net for March is ₹X on the payslip and ₹Y was credited on 7 April" proves the shortfall.
Electronic evidence — one change under the new procedure law
Emails, WhatsApp messages and portal screenshots are electronic records, and under Section 63 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 a certificate in the prescribed form is ordinarily required when they are produced in court. Practically, this means preserve the device and the original message; a forwarded screenshot photocopied twice is worth very little. Take help on the certificate before the hearing, not on the day of it.
What it costs in time
Impressions, not guarantees — court speed varies enormously by district and by how much the other side wants to delay. A Payment of Wages claim before the authority can be disposed of in a few months, sometimes a year. A Section 33C(2) application before a Labour Court, if contested, commonly runs two to five years. A civil suit, if a summary suit is allowed and leave to defend is refused, can be over in about a year; if it goes to trial and then to appeal, four years and more. A Section 138 complaint, if contested, usually takes a year or two. Anyone who tells you it will be quick is guessing.
What to bring to a consultation
- The appointment letter and every revision or increment letter.
- Payslips for the disputed months — all of them, not the worst one.
- Bank statements showing what was actually credited, for the same dates.
- Any communication about the shortfall: emails, messages, minutes of a meeting, a letter from HR.
- The full and final settlement or resignation correspondence, if you have left.
- A note of your exact role — who you reported to, whether you could hire, appraise, sanction leave or bind the company. This decides which forum you can go to.
- A one-page statement, month by month: gross, deductions, net due, net received, shortfall.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can my employer pay me less than my contract says?
Only if the deduction or reduction is lawful — a statutory deduction such as PF, ESI or professional tax; a deduction permitted by the applicable Wage Act, a settlement or the terms of your contract; or a component that the contract itself makes conditional, such as a bonus dependent on a stated criterion. "Business is slow" is not, on its own, a lawful reason to cut a fixed salary. The burden of showing the deduction was authorised sits with the employer.
My employer says the missing amount was a variable bonus, not salary. Does that change things?
It can change everything. Fixed salary is a debt that accrues month by month. A bonus or incentive payable at the employer's discretion, or on targets it assesses, may not be recoverable at all unless the contract or policy makes it mandatory. The words in the appointment letter — "will be paid" against "may be paid", "subject to performance" against "as per policy" — decide this. Read that clause before you decide what you are owed.
Can I be forced to take only part of my salary and settle for the rest?
No one can force you to sign a settlement. But understand what pressure looks like in practice: a fresh offer letter made conditional on signing, an experience letter held back, or an assurance that "the balance will come with next month's cycle". Signing a full and final voucher for a stated amount is the single most common reason these claims fail. If you must sign to get your documents, write on the voucher that you sign without prejudice to your claim for the balance, and keep a copy.
Is there a deadline to claim unpaid salary?
Yes, and it differs by route. Under the Payment of Wages Act the application is ordinarily to be made within twelve months, with a power in the authority to condone delay for sufficient cause. A civil suit runs on a three-year limitation from each instalment. A Section 138 notice must go within thirty days of the dishonour memo. The shortest window governs your practical deadline.
Can I file a police complaint for non-payment of salary?
Not for the salary alone. What can support a police complaint is entrustment — deducted PF or ESI not deposited, or money entrusted to a specific person and misappropriated. If the police refuse to register an FIR, the remedy is an application to the Magistrate under Section 175(3) of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023. Do not treat the criminal route as a faster way to recover money; the ordinary outcome is a civil case, plus cost and delay.
How do I prove what I should have been paid?
The payslip is the employer's own admission of the gross and the deductions. Place it against the bank statement. The gap between the net shown on the payslip and the amount credited is the claim, and no witness is needed to establish it. Where payslips were never issued, or the portal is closed, the appointment letter plus bank credits going back years will do the work.
What if the company has shut down or the directors have disappeared?
A decree against a company with no assets is a piece of paper. Before spending on litigation, check the company's status on the MCA register, whether it is in insolvency or liquidation, and whether there are any assets at all. Sometimes the honest answer is that there is nothing worth pursuing against the company and the better enquiry is whether a personal guarantee, a director's undertaking or a group entity gives you another defendant. On those facts, we may tell you there is nothing to argue.
What to send us
A short note is enough to start. Send the order or letter that created the shortfall — the payslip, the HR communication, the settlement — along with its date, and two lines on what you do, who you report to, and whether you are still employed there. Attach the appointment letter and the bank statement for the disputed months if you have them to hand. From that we can usually tell you which forum is open to you, whether limitation is a live problem, and whether the claim is worth the fee.
Write to /contact-us or book a slot at /book. If your documents are on an employer portal you are about to lose access to, download them first. That is more urgent than the consultation.
This article is general information about Indian law and is not legal advice on your own situation. Outcomes turn on documents and dates that only a reading of your file can establish.
Advocate Sudhir Rao, Supreme Court of India