Girija Vaidyanathan and 3 IAS officers appear before Madras HC in contempt case
Chennai: Tamil Nadu Chief Secretary Girija Vaidyanathan and three other IAS officers appeared in the Madras High Court on Tuesday following its directive on a contempt plea over failure by authorities concerned to reconvey the land acquired by the government for a project. A division bench comprising Justices K K Sasidharan and P Velmurugan said it ordered their appearance only to apprise the chief secretary and others about the sorry state of affairs wherein government officials were not carrying out orders of the high court.
Noting that officials concerned would not obey court orders till a contempt petition was filed, the bench said even an order by the court for consideration of a representation by a petitioner was kept pending for years together. The process of consideration of representation would commence only when notice was received by the officer in the contempt petition. “This is a very peculiar feature in the state of Tamil Nadu. We are informed that in the neighbouring state of Kerala, there is no pendency of contempt petitions at all,” the court said in its order.
It also observed that authorities file review petitions even after dismissal of special leave petitions by the Supreme Court and said courts were compelled to spend considerable time to decide contempt pleas. “The litigant must be in a position to enjoy the fruits of the order in his or her life time. The authorities are not sensitive to the issue and the result is filing of contempt petitions as a routine measure,” the bench observed. The contempt petition was filed by A B Somu and 11 others seeking action against officials concerned for their failure to implement an earlier court order directing re-conveyance of their land in Koyambedu here acquired by the government for the wholesale vegetable and fruits market.
The high court ordered the re-conveyance of the land as it had not been utilised for the purpose for which it was acquired. The order was later upheld by the Supreme Court. However, the authorities did not reconvey the land following which the contempt plea was filed. Holding that the contempt petition was a “classic example” of how the state was flouting court orders, the bench had on Monday asked the Chief Secretary and others to appear before it.
The then Housing and Urban Development Secretary Dharmendra Pratap Yadav, incumbent S Krishnan and Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority Member-Secretary Vijaya Rajkumar were the other officials who appeared before the bench today. Justice Sasidharan asked the Chief Secretary whether she was aware of contempt petitions against government officials filed in the court. She said in the present petition the land acquired for the market project had been put to use for construction of other government buildings. Hence, land of similar value would be provided to the petitioners in alternative places.
The bench then directed the Chief Secretary to file an affidavit with regard to allotment of alternative land and adjourned the matter. It also directed the Registrar (Judicial) to furnish the details of the contempt petitions to state Advocate General so as to enable him to forward it to the Chief Secretary. The bench directed the Chief Secretary to issue circulars to all the departments to ensure time-bound compliance of the orders passed by the court.
