The Rajasthan High Court has ordered to stop the salaries of three IAS officers Hemant Gera, Rajendra Kumar Bhatt and Tarachand Meena for contempt of its orders.
While then principal secretary Hemant Gera is now chairman revenue board, then collector Udaipur Tarachand Meena and then divisional commissioner Udaipur Rajendra Kumar Bhatt have retired from the service.
The court has also ordered for the presence of secretary of personnel department KK Pathak in the court in person.
In fact, in an order 3 and a half years ago, the Rajasthan High Court had ruled in favour of 9 petitioners directing the state government to implement the third pay-scale and pay them the arrears. However, even after years, the orders of the High Court were not complied with. Due to this, the single bench of senior judge of the High Court Dinesh Mehta took this stern action.
To ensure compliance with these directions of the court, the High Court Registry has also been directed to send a copy of the order to the Chief Secretary of the state.
What is the case?
The petitioners Ramesh Chandra Audichya, Kishanlal Vaishnav and 7 others were working as ministerial staff in Udaipur District Collector and Divisional Commissioner's office. They were given the first and second selected pay scale after fixing the date of permanent to August 13, 1987, but were denied the third selected pay scale scheduled after 27 years of service.
The petitioners had filed a writ petition in the matter, which was accepted by the High Court on September 23, 2021. After this, the third selected pay scale payable on 27 years was calculated from August 12, 2014 and all kinds of benefits were ordered to be given to the petitioners within 3 months of the High Court's judgement. Along with this, clear instructions were given to pay the arrears of increased salary and consequential profit by March 31, 2022. After this, they were not given this benefit for about 3 and a half years.
Arguments and counter-arguments
After this, the petitioners filed a contempt petition through advocate Yashpal Khileri, seeking strict punishment for the contemptors. On receipt of the notice of contempt petition, the public prosecutor on behalf of the contemptors filed a reply and said that the orders could not be carried out as the case was pending a special appeal in this case.
On this, lawyer Khileri said that the special appeal has been rejected on August 2, 2023. There was no stay order on a single bench order in the appeal, in such a case the contemptors have only tried to mislead the court, which falls under the category of clear contempt of the court.
Along with this, the state government was ordered to submit the list of all responsible personnel before and present after August 2, 2023 related to this contempt file from LDC to the district collector in the court on the next appearance. The next hearing in the case was scheduled for March 25.
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