Ensure compliance with orders: HC to Chief Secretary

Says officials are not following them till contempt petitions are filed

The Madras High Court on Tuesday directed Chief Secretary Girija Vaidyanathan to issue a circular instructing all government departments to comply with judicial orders in a time-bound manner so that the court was not burdened with increasing number of contempt of court applications.

A Division Bench of Justices K.K. Sasidharan and P. Velmurugan issued the direction after recording the presence of Ms. Vaidyanathan who had been summoned to bring to her attention the sordid state of affairs prevailing in the State where even judicial orders were not complied with promptly.

“We found from our experience that the officials concerned would not obey the orders passed by the courts till contempt petitions are filed. The contempt petitions are filed more like execution petitions. Even an order issuing a writ of mandamus for consideration of a representation is kept pending for years together.

“The process of consideration of representation would commence only when notice is received by the officer concerned 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 petition at all,” the judges observed.

Passing interim orders in one of the contempt applications, they went on to state: “There is yet another mode of avoiding court orders by the authorities and that is by way of filing review petitions after the dismissal of the Special Leave Petitions and review petitions by the honourable Supreme Court.

“There should be a finality to the litigation. 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 court is compelled to spend considerable time even to decide the contempt petitions.”

After the Chief Secretary agreed to address the issue raised by the court, the judges directed the HC Registry to furnish details of all pending contempt petitions to the Chief Secretary through Advocate Vijay Narayan and directed her to convene periodical meetings to ascertain the factual position and issue necessary instructions to streamline the system.