High Court cannot issue writ for compliance with Supreme Court judgment: Allahabad High Court

The Allahabad High Court at Lucknow recently dismissed a writ petition for the enforcement of a Supreme Court order, while observing that the High Court cannot issue writs to enforce orders of the top court [Deepak Dewvedi and Ors vs State of UP and Ors]..Justice Abdul Moin added that once a judgment that is passed by the apex court is not complied with, it is always open for the petitioners to file a contempt of court petition before the Supreme Court itself. ."Once the judgement has been passed by the Hon'ble Supreme Court and there is non compliance of the same as such it is always open for the petitioners to file a contempt petition but there cannot be any occasion for the High Court to have the judgement of the Hon'ble Supreme Court complied with," the Court said..The petitioners had earlier secured relief from the Supreme Court after they challenged the cancellation of their appointments to certain posts. They later filed contempt of court petitions before the top court alleging that the Supreme Court's directions were not followed. The Supreme Court disposed of these contempt pleas by asking the petitioners to approach the appropriate authorities with representations. A second round of contempt petitions was filed when these representations also did not yield any positive response. The Supreme Court, however, disposed of the second petition while urging the authorities to deal with the petitioners' representation at the earliest and adding that the Court could not keep issuing directions. .Meanwhile, some other litigants secured relief from the High Court in a similar matter. This led the petitioners to approach the High Court this time with a plea to extend the same benefits to them as well. The High Court, however, refused to intervene, opining that the petitioners would now have to approach the Supreme Court in the matter. .Relying on the High Court decision in Ajaypal Singh and Ors vs State of UP, the bench noted that if a Supreme Court judgment is not complied with, the power is vested with the Supreme Court itself to take contempt action. .The judge acknowledged that in Arnesh Kumar vs State of Bihar and Anr, the Supreme Court had held that a High Court could haul up errant officers for flouting the top court's orders. However, this would only be possible if the Supreme Court says the concerned jurisdictional High Court can be approached to hold such officers liable for contempt, the judge further opined. In the present case, however, there was no such direction to the High Court to monitor the compliance of the Supreme Court's directions. .Therefore, the Court dismissed the plea and left it open to the petitioners to pursue an appropriate remedy..The petitioners were represented by advocates Sharad Pathak and Piyush Pathak.The respondent-State authorities were represented a Chief Standing Counsel (CSC) of the Uttar Pradesh government and advocates Prashant Kumar Singh and Ran Vijay Singh..[Read Order]