BENGALURU: The State Government issued an order asking the Revenue department to file a Special Leave Petition in the Supreme Court against a High Court order revoking transfer orders issued to 90 sub-registrars and senior sub-registrars in Karnataka.
The petition will be filed tomorrow (Tuesday). The Revenue department had transferred them on December 10, 2024. However, most sub-registrars transferred from Bengaluru refused to join other districts and opted to stay back in the city.
They obtained a stay against the order on February 18. The Stamps and Registration Department had witnessed an indefinite sit-in protest from February 20 by 40 sub-registrars and senior sub-registrars demanding the order against their transfer issued by the High Court be implemented. The department pacified them and made them call off the protest after 28 hours, assuring they would be reinstated on February 23.
Inspector General of Registration and Commissioner of Stamps, KV Dayananda, told TNIE, “We initially decided to give the login access and permit them to continue working in Bengaluru and reinstate all those transferred on February 21.
However, the following day (February 22), Revenue Minister and the CM decided that the transfer orders should be implemented in public interest and we cannot kowtow to such a demand.” Advocate General, Karnataka, Shashikaran Shetty, said, “We have already succeeded before the Karnataka Administrative Tribunal where we represented our position. The High Court cannot revoke the transfers based on an interim order. Hence, we decided to approach the Supreme Court over the issue.”
Lawyer Rubin Jacob, who is arguing on behalf of the government, said, “The GO has been issued by the state permitting us to go ahead with the SLP. We will be filing the petition on Tuesday (March 4).”
Further, a senior sub-registrar confirmed that those transferred from Bengaluru were not given the login access as promised ten days ago. The Karnataka State Stamps and Registration Department Employees Association also met Chief Secretary Shalini Rajneesh on February 26 and highlighted the issues they were facing, including repeated glitches in Kaveri 2.0 software.