Express News Service
DEHRADUN: Uttarakhand High Court has issued a notice to the ex-chairman of the Central Administrative Tribunal in a case of contempt petition while hearing a recall application over an order by the HC itself.
The order dated February 16, 2022 states, “Issue notice to the respondent on recall application, returnable within four weeks.”
The next hearing on the matter has been scheduled for March 29, 2022.
The order pertains to the closure of a contempt petition against the former CAT chairman by Indian Forest Service officer Sanjiv Chaturvedi despite stay orders by a division bench of the Supreme Court of India.
In November 2021, a single-judge bench of Justice Manoj Tiwari of Uttarakhand HC had closed the contempt petition against CAT chairman L Narasimha Reddy in Chaturvedi’s case.
In March 2019, the Supreme Court had stayed all further proceedings in the matter.
The division bench of Justices R Bhanumati and Subhash Reddy in the order dated March 11, 2019, directed, “Further, there shall be a stay of all further proceedings pursuant to impugned order dated 20.02.2019 in Contempt Petition (CLCON) NO. 63/2019 on the file of High court of Uttarakhand at Nainital until further orders.”
The petitioner, Sanjiv Chaturvedi, a 2002 batch Indian Forest Services officer who is posted in Haldwani of Nainital district as chief conservator of forests in his recall application pointed out that none of the parties in the contempt petition had requested, any counsels from any of the parties were not present.
The petitioner in the application also drew the attention of the court to the fact that the CAT chairman has neither bothered to comply with the orders of the Uttarakhand High Court to file any compliance affidavit nor even filed any response till this date in the contempt petition.
He also pointed out violations of the Supreme Court orders.
Earlier in August 2018, Uttarakhand HC had set aside an order dated July 27, 2018, passed by CAT chairman Justice Reddy with strong strictures and imposed a cost of Rs. 25,000 on the central government and its instrumentalities terming their attitude as ‘prima facie vindictive’ against the IFS officer.
The court had termed the orders as “vindictive” and also noted that the very grounds on which the stay was granted by the chairman, were incorrect as all three cases were totally different. The court had also imposed a fine of Rs 25,000 on the central government. Later, the Supreme Court had doubled this fine on February 1, 2019, while upholding the HC’s order.
On September 7, 2018, reacting to the HC order, the CAT chairman Reddy presiding over a single bench of the CAT, in his order stated, “It appears that Section 25 of the Administrative TribunalsAct, 1985 was not brought to the notice of their Lordships. Section 25 confers exclusive powers on the Chairman of the tribunal to transfer any pending case from one Bench to another, and the power to stay the further proceedings in such matters is incidental.
The chairman further remarked in the order, “Further, the question as to how a writ petition could have been filed before Uttarakhand High Court challenging the order passed by Principal Bench of this Tribunal was also not examined, obviously because, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, who filed this, was neither issued notice nor was represented. The comments made in the order passed by the Uttarakhand High Court, in a way, are in the teeth of Section 25 of the Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985.”
Interestingly, Justice Tiwari was one of the members of the division bench of the order in August 2018 on which the CAT chairman had reacted in September 2018.
Following this, in February 2019, the Uttarakhand HC had issued notice to the chairman while hearing a contempt petition against him. In March 2019, the Supreme Court stayed the proceedings of the contempt against the chairman.
