Contempt of court: HC stays single-judge order holding 3 top Punjab officers guilty

A division bench of Punjab and Haryana high court has stayed single-judge order holding three top officers — two IAS and one IFS officer of Punjab guilty of contempt of court.

The officers were additional chief secretary-cum-financial commissioner (forest department) Vikas Garg, local government principal secretary Ajoy Sharma and principal chief conservator of forests Raman Kant Mishra.

They had challenged October 12 order of single-judge bench of justice Arvind Sangwan which found them “prima facie guilty of violating the court orders as well as the undertaking given by them”. The single-judge bench had not pronounced quantum of punishment to these officers.

Appearing for the officers, state’s advocate general Gurminder Singh had argued that development activities that the petitioners were claiming to have been stalled were being carried out. They had also shown certain photographs showing the activity which the state was undertaking.

In the appeal, it was further argued that they were held guilty of contempt of court without appreciating documents on record as per which orders of the court stood complied with. It was also argued that appealants did not issue any letter in contrary to submissions in court and one inter-departmental communication about the eco-sensitive zone was being cited by the petitioners as violation of court orders, which in fact had no relation with the contempt proceedings.

The single-judge order had come on a plea filed by Bari Karoran gram panchayat in Mohali on May 18, 2023, seeking contempt proceedings for violation of court orders. The plea said, villagers were facing continuous problems in terms of development, which was to be carried out in terms of a 2014 order of high court. In 2014, the HC had ruled in favour of villagers paving way for de-notification of a piece of land notified under the Punjab Land Preservation Act, 1900, and declaring it as non-forest land. The apex court upheld the order but a notification was not being issued due to which villagers are facing problems, it was argued.