DEHRADUN: In an unprecedented move, a single bench of Uttarakhand High Court has closed a contempt petition by Indian Forest Service officer Sanjiv Chaturvedi despite stay orders by division bench of the Supreme Court of India.
The single bench of Justice Manoj Kumar Tiwari on November 17, 2021 closed the contempt petition against Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) chairman L Narasimha Reddy in Chaturvedi's case.
"There is no representation for the petitioner. In view of the order dated 11.03.2019 passed by Hon’ble Supreme Court in Special Leave to Appeal (Civil) No. 6550 of 2019, whereby the present contempt proceedings have been kept in abeyance, which has been placed on record by Registry, the Contempt Petition is closed. Contempt notice issued to respondent is hereby discharged," stated the order dated November 17, 2021 by single bench of Justice Manoj Kumar Tiwari.
"However, petitioner shall be at liberty to seek recall of this order, as and when the SLP is decided in his favour," the order further said. The recall application filed by Sanjiv Chaturvedi, a 2002 batch Indian Forest Services Officer was heard by Justice Manoj Kumar Tiwari on Wednesday who directed it to be listed for January 14, 2022.
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 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."
Chaturvedi, who is posted in Haldwani of Nainital district as chief conservator of forests, in his recall application, pointed out in his petition 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 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 complaince affidavit nor even filed any response till this date in the contempt petition.
He also pointed out violations of the Supreme Court orders.
Commenting on the matter, Sudarshan Goel, senior advocate from the SC said, "This order by single judge of Uttarakhand High Court is clear violation of orders of Supreme Court which had stayed all further proceedings. In my entire carrier running over decades I have never seen such order by a single bench of any High Court judge against division bench of the Supreme Court."
Earlier in August 2018, Uttarakhand HC had set aside 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 the three cases were totally different. The court had also imposed fine of Rs 25,000 on 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 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 theTribunal to transfer any pending case from one Bench toanother, and the power to stay the further proceedings in suchmatters is incidental.
The chairman further remarked in the order, "Further, then 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 MedicalSciences, 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.