State, through its inactivity, partly responsible for flood of writ petitions before Court: Madhya Pradesh High Court

The Madhya Pradesh High Court recently slammed State government authorities for their failure to act on a High Court order passed in 2013, even though the said order had directed for its compliance within three months (Sona Bai v. Shri Vinod Singh Baghel, Principal Secretary, Tribal Welfare Department Matralaya and others). .While hearing the contempt petition moved in the matter back in 2014, Justice Atul Sreedharan was prompted to observe that such inaction is partly to blame for the flood of writ petitions before the High Court. ."... the inaction on the part of the State for a good seven years shows the sheer insensitivity of the State and its bureaucracy and is worthy of dereliction in the strongest terms. The State through its inactivity is partly responsible for the flood of writ petition before this Court and after the orders passed by this Court, it leads to filing of the contempt petition because the State and its instrumentalities do not comply with the order passed by this Court within the time period given in the order", reads the order passed on Wednesday..The Court further opined that undue liberty has been granted from time to time when it came to the compliance of its orders, which is being taken for granted. It added,"The abject disdain of the State and its functionaries to the orders passed by this Court is only on account of the leniency shown by this Court. Time and again, looking at the work load of the State and its functionaries, this Court has been loath to proceed against the guilty in contempt. This has emboldened them repeatedly and they put the orders passed by this Court in the back-burn.".The Judge termed the case before him as a classic example of such latitude, where the State was found to have taken seven years only to come out with a pathetic response meant to oust the petitioner from making claims under a 1978 circular. .He warned the State that its powers are accompanied by concomitant responsibility. In this regard, the Court also quoted author Rudyard Kipling who had deprecated the notion of power without responsibility. ."Time and again, the State has, by its violation or its non-compliance to the orders passed by this Court, (shown) that it is an institution that prefers to have powers without responsibility", Justice Sreedharan said.. Having made these observations, the Court proceeded to direct the State to decide within two weeks the representation made by the petitioner in the matter, concerning his entitlement to a regular pay-scale..The case was posted to be taken up next on February 2. .Read the order: