Over a hundred state government employees sought contempt action against chief secretary Subhash Chandra Khuntia and principal secretary PWD Lakshminarayan and others.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to consider on Friday a plea seeking contempt action against Karnataka’s top officers for “wilful disobedience” of the court’s direction pertaining to reservation in the promotion of SC/ST employees.
Over a hundred state government employees sought contempt action against chief secretary Subhash Chandra Khuntia and principal secretary PWD Lakshminarayan and others. They claimed the government did not comply with the court’s direction passed on February 9.
Advocates Rajeev Dhawan and Kiran Suri, appearing for the petitioners, mentioned the matter before a three-judge bench presided over by Chief Justice Dipak Misra.
They sought early listing of the petition, saying the three months granted to the government had already elapsed and it did not take any action over the court’s directions.
The apex court had, in February, directed for revision of the seniority list of employees within three months. It also declared as unconstitutional the provisions of the Karnataka Determination of Seniority of the Government Servants Promoted on the Basis of Reservation (To the Posts in the Civil Services of the State) Act, 2002. It had said the consequential promotions to serving employees, based on seniority benefit, will be treated as ad hoc and liable to be reviewed.
The petitioners claimed the government neither published the final seniority lists of all cadres in the PWD within the stipulated period of three months nor took any action within the period.
“Outer time limit granted to implement the judgment expired. Thus, a clear-cut case of wilful disobedience of the judgment and order of this court dated February 2, 2017 is made out,” the petition said.
They said, “defiance is apparent” as the state did not revert the “illegal promotees” within three months. It has not even published the complete provisional seniority lists of all cadres such as chief engineer and engineer-in-chief. The government filed a review petition against the judgement. It decided to pass an ordinance apparently to avoid complying with the judgement.