Chennai: Imposing a cost of Rs 50,000 on tahsildar of North taluk Office of Tirupur district for making a woman to run from pillar to post for getting patta and for his failure to appear before the Madras high court despite repeated notices, the court has directed him to appear before it on June 25.
Justice T Raja, before whom a petition filed by Jayakodi came up for hearing, said tahsildar has not even bothered to file an affidavit giving reasons for failing to appear before the court. Therefore, for not properly instructing the special government pleader and taking serious note of his conduct, this court is constrained to impose the cost of Rs 50,000 payable from his own pocket to the petitioner for unnecessarily dragging her to the court and for wasting the valuable and precious time of this court as well as the department.
Directing the tahsildar to appear before the court on June 25, warned him that failing to appear before the court on June 25 the Registry shall issue statutory notice.
Counsel for the petitioner M Velmurugan said that Jayakodi had applied for issuance of patta for a property in Tiruppur in favour of her mother. The District Revenue Officer issued necessary orders on November 27, 2002. And, on March 29, 2004 the district collector had confirmed the DRO order.
As Tahsildar had not taken any action, Jeyakodi moved the High Court with the petition for a direction to the Tahsildar to carry out the orders of Collector and DRO. When the matter came up for hearing on April 16 this year, the judge had wondered why the tahsildar had not reported compliance of orders of his superiors. The judge directed him to show cause why departmental action should not be taken for not punctually complying with the orders of the superiors.
Posting the matter to April 23, the judge directed him to submit his explanations. However, the tahsildar did not respond to this order and the subsequent notices issued repeatedly.
