Lok Pal Singh J of Uttarakhand HC issues contempt notice against law officer

Justice Lok Pal Singh of the Uttarakhand High Court has slapped Chief Standing Counsel for the state government Paresh Tripathi with a contempt notice, for allegedly misleading the Court..An order to this effect was passed earlier this week, while the Court was hearing a service matter..The matter in question was a writ petition filed by employees who had been working at a government educational institution since 1995. The petitioners claimed that ever since the institution was provincialized in 2011, they have not been paid their salaries. The Court on January 9 this year directed the respondents to pay the salary of the petitioners on or before February 20 with 50% of the arrears..However, this direction was not complied with. The Court thus required the presence of the Directorate of Intermediate Education to be present on the next date of hearing on April 4..Thereafter, the state government filed a recall application, drafted by Anil Dabral, Standing Counsel for the state of Uttarakhand. While hearing this application, it came to the notice of the Court that an affidavit filed in support of it was false. The fact that such a thing was not happening for the first time led the Court to make some adverse remarks against law officers of the state..“This court had an occasion to see such kind of irregularities/misrepresentations in the applications and counter affidavit(s) drafted by the Standing Counsel in stereo typed manner and in order to improve the quality of counter affidavit(s), so that it may not happen in future, despite the repeated requests of this court, there seems to be no improvement in the working of most of the Standing Counsel appearing before this Court.”.As per the order, Dabral then stated that Advocate General SN Babulkar would appear in Court to give an assurance that such a thing would not happen in the future. However, owing to the ill health of the Advocate General, the Court was told that Chief Standing Counsel Tripathi would explain things to the Court..Tripathi submitted to the Court that there was no mistake in the affidavit. But after the Court contested this claim, the order states,.“After that he realized that he also made a false statement that the affidavit is correct and made statement that what was stated by him earlier is not correct and admitted the fact that there is mistake in drafting the recall application.”.This prompted the Court to issue notice to the Chief Education Officer in the state, directing him to show cause as to why action should not be taken against him for filing the affidavit in question. On April 4, the case was directed to be listed on April 20..Since then, Justice Singh notes in the order, neither AG Babulkar or CSC Tripathi appeared before the Court to offer an explanation. This, despite the AG being regularly seen around the court campus..Noting that Tripathi had deliberately been avoiding his Court, Justice Singh states,.“…the conduct of Mr. Paresh Tripathi, Chief Standing Counsel was not to assist the Court, rather he tried to defend the erring officers on false pretext, which definitely is a calculated act to obstruct or interfere with the due course of justice and administration of law….…Since, Mr. Paresh Tripathi, Chief Standing Counsel is not deliberately appearing in my Court and is avoiding my Court deliberately and willingly and he has made a false statement to mislead this Court, such an act is contemptuous.”.The Court therefore initiated proceedings under Section 2(b) of the Contempt of Courts Act against Tripathi, who has been directed to show why he should not be held guilty thereunder by May 14, the next date of hearing..This is not the first time Justice Lok Pal Singh has taken on the members of the Bar. Earlier this year, lawyers at the High Court boycotted Justice Singh’s court after the judge had allegedly made disparaging remarks against them, and had imposed heavy costs on them..In March, Justice Singh had pulled up litigants and their lawyers after “serious illegalities” were found to be committed in filing a writ petition..Most recently, Justice Singh went head-to-head with Senior Advocate Avtar Singh Rawat, when he called upon the Full Court to decide whether or not the latter should be stripped of his designation on grounds of professional misconduct..Read the order: