The lifecycle of litigation should start with the arising of a cause of action, followed by the institution of the case, ending with an order/judgment. But reality is quite different.

Generally, it is assumed by citizens that once an order/judgement is passed by a constitutional court, the executive will immediately implement the order.

But what lies ahead is a more gruelling and exhausting battle to make the government department comply with the order. The feeling of ultimate victory devolves into despair and financial strain, endless rounds of courts and labour to secure necessary documents. Everything seems to be futile when the order is not given effect to. 

When administrative officers create unnecessary delay in complying with the order of a constitutional court, the only remedy available to the citizen is to file a contempt petition under Section 12 of the Contempt of Courts Act,1971 read with Article 215 of the Constitution of India. Civil contempt is defined as wilful disobedience of any judgment, decree, direction, order, writ or other process of a court or wilful breach of an undertaking given to a court.

Despite provisions for enforcement and punishment prescribed - including simple imprisonment for a term which may extend to 6 months or with a fine which may extend to ₹2,000 or both - rarely are these punishments meted out to secure compliance.

To better understand the structural paralysis that has crept into the enforcement mechanism, it is necessary to look at the pendency of contempt applications before the High Court of Orissa.

According to figures released under the Right to Information (RTI) Act by the State Public Information Officer of the High Court of Orissa, 12,786 contempt applications are currently pending before the Orissa High Court as of August 25, 2026. The year-wise pendency reveals a striking accumulation of cases over the years: 292 cases were pending from before 2017; 25 from 2017; 37 from 2018; 246 from 2019; 432 from 2020; 779 from 2021; 1,277 from 2022; 1,802 from 2023; 2,157 from 2024; 2,275 from 2025; and 3,208 from 2026. The civil contempt docket has continued to build over the years.

The RTI response also points to a legacy of contempt litigation involving cases from the Odisha Administrative Tribunal (OAT) benches. 15 CONTC(CP) contempt petitions at the Bhubaneswar Bench and 4 CONTC(CPC) contempt petitions at the Cuttack Bench are classified as pending from before 2017. In total, 9 CONTC(CPC) and 25 CONTC(CP) matters remain pending. A glance at the High Court’s cause lists shows that some of these matters are decades old, with proceedings originating before the erstwhile OAT, which was dissolved in 2019.

These are not just statistical figures; they reflect orders involving government employees, doctors, teachers awaiting pension and service benefits, reinstated employees seeking back wages and thousands of litigants who approached the constitutional court seeking justice and are now locked in perpetual limbo. Many of these contempt petitions are filed for the second or third time, as sometimes the Court directs a compliance report to be filed within a specific time period in the registry, which are not filed.

This evasive attitude of bureaucrats is actively supported by government empanelled advocates who have perfected the art of delay tactics - from seeking adjournments on grounds that they are yet to receive instructions to claims that the matter is under active consideration. When pressured by the Court to act, they file half-baked compliance affidavits that don’t comply with anything. Then starts the cycle of compliance affidavits and objections being filed by the petitioner.

Another frequent tactic is pointing to delayed intra-court writ appeals (WA) in High Court or special leave petitions (SLPs) before the Supreme Court. Even without an explicit stay order and often only the ground that a writ appeal or SLP has been filed, adjournments are routinely sought. It is a settled position of law that orders can’t be kept in abeyance without a stay. Yet, counsel request delays, judges reiterate the law and adjournments are granted anyway.

The problem is further compounded by judicial practice. In Mahendra Prasad Agarwal v. Arvind Kumar Singh (2026), the Supreme Court held,

“When a claim of a right is legal and justified, relief must follow. The Constitutional or statutory remedies are not intended for academic discourse. If a case deserves relief, it must be granted then and there, unflinchingly if need be. Balancing of equities is not to be confused with avoiding or postponing the relief. These are not matters of law, but of its working and practice."

Despite this, the practice of passing generic "to consider" orders persists in the High Court of Orissa. Except for enriching the advocates and spiking the disposal rates of the court, these orders don’t provide any substantial relief to the litigant. The orders issued by the High Court are not given effect to and only when the contempt petition is filed, a generic cyclostyled official rejection order is passed, forcing the litigant into the loop of a second round of litigation.

Moreover, while Section 20 of the Contempt of Courts Act sets a 1-year limitation for initiating contempt, no statutory limit governs how long an accepted petition can remain pending.

When contempt petitions remain pending for decades, the rule of law devolves into executive discretion. Bureaucrats learn that ignoring writs carries no real penalty; the maximum punishment that might be meted out to them is personal appearance before the courts. This has been further diluted with the introduction of virtual appearances, while citizens realise their favourable orders are mere paper victories and they feel the limits of justice dispensation by the constitutional courts. The State having massive resources at its disposal and India being a welfare state, it is necessary that government panel advocates should try and make the State a model litigant. The State must be held to a higher standard of compliance, not a lower one.

Faith in the judiciary is what sustains public adherence to the rule of law. Restoring accountability requires decisive action: refusing frivolous adjournments, directing the registry to reject incomplete compliance affidavits, imposing costs on defaulting officers, fixing strict timelines for disposing of contempt petitions and issuing binding orders on merits rather than circulating "to consider" directions is the need of the hour. 

Bismay Ray is an advocate practicing before the High Court of Orissa.