High Court fumes at mounting contempt cases against Telangana govt

Hyderabad: A furious Telangana High Court pulled up the state government on Friday for not acting on its orders. The HC said things perhaps won't improve until it sends a few officers to jail for contempt.

A division bench of Chief Justice Raghavendra Singh Chauhan and Justice A Abhishek Reddy were upset as they heard a petition of the Telangana government requesting the court to condone the delay in filing the appeal against an order in a contempt case.

The HC expressed serious concerns and anger over the growing number of contempt cases due to non-implementation of its order by the state. The bench told Advocate General B S Prasad that more than 800 such cases are pending before a single judge and there are over 2,000 contempt cases with the HC.

"Will you teach your officers to implement the orders of this Court or should we send a few to jail so that they learn this lesson?" the judges asked the Advocate General.

The bench reminded the A-G that it had proposed to the government around six months back to frame to a State Litigation Policy to prevent such disobedience of court orders. Unless the state ensures that its officers implement court orders, the court will have to punish a few officers to set an example for others, said the judges. The A-G assured the HC that he would share the judges' observation with the government.