Hyderabad: The Hyderabad High Court has pulled up the Executive Officer of Kanakadurga Temple at Vijayawada for not regularising the services of casual employees despite a court order.
Justice M S Ramachandra Rao while dealing with suo motto contempt has pulled up executive officer A. Surya Kumari for showing scant respect towards the orders of the High Court.
A. Krishna Durga Siva Kumar and V. Praneeth Babu, causal employees of the temple, had earlier moved the High Court stating that while the authorities had decided to absorb the services of those temporary employees who had completed five years of service, the same benefit was not being extended to them.
When the court had sought the reasons for not regularising the services of two petitioners, the officials had told the court that there was a ban on the recruitment.
The court rejected their argument and directed them to regularise casual employees known as NMR employees.
The petitioners brought to the notice of the court that despite orders pf the court, the authorities had not regularised their services.
The court took a serious view of the matter and suo motto initiated a contempt of court case and summoned the executive officer.
When the officer appeared before the court, the judge sought to know from Mr S. S. Varma, counsel for the Endowments Department as to why the officer was choosing to mislead the court.
The judge said that the officials were not free to use ‘ban on recruitment’ as a reason to refuse regularisation of these employees. The judge also pointed out that when the contempt of court case was filed, the officer had apologised to the court for the lapse on one hand and raised the 'ban on recruitment' issue once again.
While refusing to dispense with the presence of the officer, the judge directed the officer to file an affidavit expressing regret for raising the ban issue once again despite a court order asking them to not raise this point with respect to NMR employees.
