The Punjab & Haryana High Court took exception to Punjab Chief Secretary K A P Sinha (IAS:1992:PB)’s stand on the alleged non-compliance with its orders in the DA arrears case on Friday and directed the contempt case against him to be placed before the bench having jurisdiction as per the roster.
A division bench of Chief Justice Ashwani Kumar Mishra and Justice Rohit Kapoor passed the order after the court was informed about the Chief Secretary’s stand that there was no deliberate intention to make a false statement regarding removal of defects in the state govt’s Special Leave Petition (SLP) filed in the Supreme Court.
The Punjab govt’s counsel submitted that the CS had no intention to mislead the court and was willing to offer an unconditional apology.
But the bench was unrelenting and went ahead to direct the matter to the court, having jurisdiction as per roster.
The contempt proceedings were initiated after the state govt‘s alleged failure to comply with the High Court’s directions to pay all pending DA arrears to govt employees and pensioners within 15 days.
The court had directed the Chief Secretary to file a compliance affidavit, but it was not filed as directed, following which applications seeking contempt proceedings were moved.
In the meantime, the state govt moved a Special Leave Petition in the top court on September 1. But some defects were detected in the SLP. The High Court then directed the govt to remove those defects.
Later a report obtained from the Supreme Court Registry showed that the defects remained unremoved.
However, the Chief Secretary had earlier filed an affidavit stating that the defects had been removed.
The court observed that giving a ‘false statement’ prima facie indicated that attempt was only to misrepresent the facts before the Court.
The matter has now been directed to be listed on October 12.
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