Madras HC threatens to jail officials for ignoring court orders

CHENNAI: Which is the nearest jail, asked a fuming Madras high court a few days ago, making it clear that it would henceforth send officials found wilfully disobeying court orders to prison. The first bench of Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice T S Sivagnanam, miffed at the increasing number of contempt of court petitions being filed nowadays, also observed that unless some officials are punished things would not change for the better.

The bench was hearing a petition by the teacher of a Namakkal-based school, seeking contempt action against the then special officer of Salem Cooperative Sugar Mills, which runs the school, for failing to implement a court order to ensure pay parity between the school staff and their counterparts in other schools.

The judges, pointing out that the teacher was before the court fighting for his rights since 2004, said even a after the high court had upheld his rights and the Supreme Court dismissed the school's appeal, authorities had not implemented the order. During arguments, the judges observed: "All is not well...we will punish the officials. How many contempt petitions are pending before this court? Unless we punish the officials concerned it will not change. We will send them to jail. Tell us which is the nearest jail."

When the next case, which too pertained to non-implementation of a court order, this time by the forest department, came up for hearing, the bench reiterated its warning that it would punish officials who deliberately disobeyed court orders.

A few months ago, another judge of the court raised the same issue and said non-implementation of court rulings would strike at the very root of the rule of law. Giving details of contempt cases pending before the court, Justice N Kirubakaran ticked off the bureaucracy for its "remarkable unwillingness and apathy."

He said the number of contempt of court cases, which was just 421 in 1990, had shot up to more than 2,900 in 2011 and 2,434 in 2012. "Disobedience of orders of courts strikes at the very root of the rule of law on which the judicial system rests," he had observed.