Wondering why large number of contempt of court petitions were piling up, the Telangana High Court on Friday remarked that it would teach the authorities how to comply with the court orders if the government fails to do so.
A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Raghvendra Singh Chauhan and Justice A. Abhishek Reddy took a serious note of the officials not enforcing orders passed by the HC. When a government counsel approached the Bench on Friday seeking to condone the delay in filing an appeal over a contempt of court petition, the HC expressed its unhappiness over the way its orders were being complied with.
The government counsel appeared in a petition in which there was 466 days of delay in filing appeal over the contempt of court order. Taking an exception to the inordinate delay over filing the appeal, the Bench said the government has to explain the delay for each day.
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The Bench said that there were close to 2,000 contempt of court petitions pending in the HC. Eight hundred of them were before a single judge only, the Bench said. This provides ample proof as to how the authorities were enforcing the court orders, the CJ said.
“Will you start training them how to respect the HC orders? Otherwise, we would have to teach them how to comply the directions,” the Bench said.
Advocate General B.S. Prasad said the court orders were being implemented wherever possible. In other matters, either appeals or vacate petitions were being filed in the HC, he said.
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The Bench told the AG that contempt petitions were coming mostly on matters connected to Revenue, Municipal, Transport and Home departments. If the authorities failed to respond, the court would be compelled to award punishment in contempt cases, the Bench said.