Sunday, September 16, 2018

Time to wake up from slumber, HC tells govt officials

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Chennai:16.09.2018

It is time officials in Tamil Nadu woke up from their ‘Kumbhakarna-type’ slumber and comply with court directions, said the Madras high court, blasting government officials for their ‘callous’ attitude in making administrative decisions, leading to longdrawn litigations and waste of judicial time.

A division bench of Justice K K Sasidharan and Justice R Subramanian made the observations on a batch of appeals challenging a government order issued by the school education department on January 12, 2015 and a consequential order of the director of public libraries dated January 13, 2015 pertaining to district library officers.

Allowing the appeals, the bench said: “Once it is found that the appellants appointment was pursuant to direct recruitment, they cannot be reverted to a lower rank…”

Expressing dissatisfaction over the way the issue was handled by the state, the bench said, “A policy decision to rationalise the service of local library authorities and to bring them into one single unit was taken by the government as early as December 11, 1989. But the adhoc rules were framed only in 2006 after a lapse of nearly 17 years.”

This exhibits the callous indifference shown by officials of the state, the bench said. In 1995, the state administrative tribunal had specifically observed that administrative decisions which involve change in service rules should be followed up by necessary changes by way of amendment without any delay, the bench pointed out.

“Despite the direction, the government has taken 17 years for framing rules, because of which the appellants had been running from pillar to post from 2007. This failure of the state to do its duty has led to this long-drawn litigation resulting in waste of court hours on trivial issue of promotions and seniority,” the court said.

The court slammed officials for their ‘callous’ attitude in making administrative decisions, leading to long-drawn litigations and waste of judicial time

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