The Madras High Court Bench here has closed a contempt of court application filed against Chief Secretary K. Gnanadesikan with a direction to him to fulfil, within four weeks, orders issued by the court on February 1, 2013, when he was the chairman of Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation (Tangedco) to regularise the services of 20 temporary employees.
A Division Bench of Justices S. Tamilvanan and V.S. Ravi also dismissed, by a common order, a petition filed by Tangedco to condone delay of 482 days in preferring a review petition against the 2013 judgement. “The respondents cannot simply state that the delay was caused due to administrative reasons when there is an inordinate delay in preferring the review,” the judges said.
They also said the Supreme Court had in a judgement delivered in 2012 observed that condoning the delay in approaching the court was an exception and not a norm and, therefore, it should not be used as an anticipated benefit by government departments which generally offered the usual explanation of related files being kept pending for years together without any progress due to red tapism.
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Holding that the corporation had not given satisfactory explanation for the delay in preferring the review and pointing out that the judgement passed in 2013 had ordered for regularising the services of the employees within eight weeks, the judges gave four more weeks’ time to implement the judgement, and said the employees could file another contempt application thereafter, if necessary.