J&K Admin’s ‘Utter Disdain’ for Court Orders Turns Justice System into a ‘Cruel Joke’: HC

The Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh High Court on Monday took strong note of the absence of the Chief Secretary and other top four officials in a contempt case and said that if these officials failed to appear in the court on the next hearing, the court would resort to coercive measures to implement justice. 

   The division bench of Justice Atul Sreedharan and Justice Javed Iqbal Wani said that the J&K administration was ignoring the Court’s orders with “utter disdain” and had turned the justice system into a "cruel joke".

   “The number of contempt petitions pending before the High Court as on date is a little over six thousand. In other words, there are at least six thousand litigants in the UT of Jammu and Kashmir who despite having orders in their favour are unable to savour the benefit of these orders,” the Court said.

    The Division Bench highlighted that a few of these contempt of court matters have been pending for 10 to 15 years and the cases pending between 1-5 years run into thousands.

    This has reduced the justice dispensation system in the UT to a cruel joke, the Court observed. 

   The bench made these scathing remarks against the J&K administration after the Chief Secretary Atal Dulloo and four other officials failed to join the proceedings before it through video conference (VC) in a contempt of court case related to the pay scale of Chief Engineers. 

   Advocate General DC Raina assured the bench that the UT’s top bureaucrat was keen to join the proceedings via VC but was facing connectivity issues. 

   However, Law Secretary Achal Sethi made a contradictory submission that the Chief Secretary was busy in a meeting. 

    “As of now, this Court is unable to ascertain as to who is lying, whether it is the person who informed the Ld. Advocate General that the Chief Secretary is keen to join the proceedings and shall do so in a few minutes or whether it was the Law Secretary who was instructed to state incorrectly on behalf of the Chief Secretary. Both these versions are starkly disparate and in gross contradiction to each other,” said the Court. 

    During the hearing, the counsel representing the contemnors submitted that a Special Leave Petition (SLP) had been filed before the Supreme Court in June against the order of which contempt was being alleged.

    The Court questioned the delay of ten months in filing the SLP. In response, it was submitted that sanction to file the SLP was granted in February 2024.

    On the delay of four months in filing the SLP, the Principal Secretary of Finance department expressed regret and said he will ascertain the cause for delay and affix responsibility.

   However, the Court examined the Supreme Court’s website and found that the SLP was filed on June 25 but not a single defect identified by the top court's Registry had been removed till date.

    “From the manner in which the Union Territory Government has conducted itself, it is clear that there is an absolute lack of sincerity of purpose on its part to comply with the order passed by this Court. It reflects a sorry state of affairs that exists in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir with regard to judicial proceedings and judicial orders,” it remarked. 

    Commenting on the overall non-compliance of court orders in J&K, the bench said that such an environment had come to exist due to the excessive latitude being shown by the court to maintain a harmonious relationship between the judiciary and executive. 

    “A tradition existed where the contemnors were given repeated adjournments, a multitude of “statement of facts” and "reports” were called – which resulted in contempt petitions pending for 4-5 years. But traditions are what things were. If contempt cases are to linger on inordinately without compliance, the very existence of this Court is meaningless. The “couldn't careless” attitude of the executive gives an impression to this Court that it has to resort to firm measures to ensure that the orders passed by this Court and by other courts judicially inferior to the High Court, are complied with in letter and spirit and are taken more seriously than the way it has been till date,” it added. [KNT]