Regularisation benefits: SC pulls up J&K officials for non-compliance of HC order
New Delhi, Mar 10 (PTI) The Supreme Court has censured Jammu and Kashmir officials for not complying with a high court court over the regularisation of daily wagers and called it as a “glaring and textbook example of obstination”.
A bench of Justices Surya Kant and N Kotiswar Singh said instead of complying with the 2007 order of the high court for regularisation of daily wagers, who worked between 14-19 years in the rural development department, the state authorities kept on passing “cryptic orders” to harass them.
“We are constrained to observe that the present case is a glaring and textbook example of obstination exhibited by the state officials/authorities, who consider themselves to be above and beyond the reach of law,” the bench said in an order on March 7.
The court said the “inaction” of the officials, who took about 16 years to comply with a “simpliciter high court order” dated May 3, 2007, was “shocking and prima facie contemptuous”.
The bench, therefore, refused to interfere with the Rs 25,000 cost imposed by a high court division bench and observed the officials ought to be “strictly” dealt with.
“However, what concerns us is not the delay of decades alone, but also the incontrovertible fact that the poor respondents, being daily wage workers, have been repeatedly harassed by the petitioners by passing cryptic orders, thereby overlooking the true import and spirit of the order dated May 3, 2007 passed by a single judge.
The top court felt the high court imposing a “symbolic cost” did not warrant any interference.
The high court on December 4, 2024, denied the relief to the union territory against the October 16, 2024 order of the single judge in a contempt plea filed by daily wagers in 2010 saying authorities hadn’t complied with the 2007 order.
