The High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh has come down hard on the administration of lieutenant governor Manoj Sinha for turning the justice dispensation system into a “cruel joke” and ignoring court orders “with utter disdain”, regretting such an attitude had contributed to a surge in contempt petitions to a staggering 6,000.

In an order on Monday, Justice Javed Iqbal Wani and Justice Atul Sreedharan gave an inside view of how the judiciary’s excessive latitude to maintain a harmonious relationship with the executive was taking a toll on justice delivery.

The order comes at a time when local politicians upped the ante against the Centre for leaving residents at the mercy of the bureaucracy in the absence of an elected government.

The court’s remarks came as chief secretary Atul Dullo and some other top officers failed to appear in a court proceeding through video conferencing.

The government gave conflicting reasons for their absence with the law secretary claiming they were busy in a meeting and the advocate-general claiming connectivity issues were coming in the way.

The bench said they were unable to ascertain who was incorrect. “Both these versions are starkly disparate and in gross contradiction to each other,” the court said.

The order arose from a petition challenging the government’s decision to place chief engineers on a par with superintending engineers in terms of pay scale. The court had earlier directed the authorities to rectify the anomaly within three months.

Despite the clear order, the government not only failed to comply but also delayed filing a special leave petition in the Supreme Court against the high court judgment.

Dullo’s failure to appear further infuriated the court.

The court said an environment had come to exist on account of the excessive latitude being shown by the court, time and again, only to maintain a harmonious relationship between the judiciary and the executive. It said it had emboldened it to consistently ignore court orders.

This, the court said, had led to a backlog of over 6,000 contempt petitions, with some cases pending for over a decade.

“A contempt case must be concluded ideally in three to five hearings in which the order is complied with, or there is no need to comply with it as the superior court or the larger bench has stayed or set aside the principal order itself, or the contemnor is punished in accordance with law,” the order reads.

“This reflects a shocking scenario where the executive is ignoring the orders passed by this court consistently with utter disdain, cocky that this court shall take no measures imperilling their liberty for their disobedience.”

The court warned it will “no longer tolerate such blatant disregard for its orders” and will take “precipitate measures” to ensure compliance with the court.

“It is, however, recording these observations herein so that the UT and the bureaucracy are put on guard that what has been happening till now with the orders of this court shall no longer be tolerated. Once an order is passed, it shall be complied with in letter and spirit, stayed or set aside by a superior court or a larger bench or, the contemnor be prepared to face the consequences for contempt of court,” the court said.

It has scheduled the next hearing for August 8 seeking the personal appearance of the chief secretary and warning that non-compliance would lead to coercive measures to secure their presence.

Terrorist hunt

Security forces on Tuesday launched a cordon-and-search operation following a tipoff about the presence of a group of terrorists in the higher reaches of Jammu and Kashmir’s Udhampur district,
officials said.

The joint search operation by police and the army was launched in Pathi Nalla Khanerd of Basantgarh, the officials said.

They said a few gunshots were heard as the forces moved deep inside the densely forested area to track down and neutralise the terrorists.

There was no report of any casualty, the officials said and added that a hunt for the terrorists was under way.

In April, a village defence guard was killed in a gunfight with terrorists in Dudu
of Basantgarh.

Additional inputs by PTI