Supreme Court stays contempt of court proceedings against Karnataka Chief Secretary, others in employee regularisation case

The Supreme Court has stayed the contempt of court proceedings initiated by the Karnataka High Court against the Karnataka Chief Secretary and other top State officials in a case concerning regularisation of employees at Zila Panchayats and other departments [State of Karnataka vs Suresh Naik & Ors]..The Bench of Chief Justice of India NV Ramana and Justices Surya Kant and Hima Kohli issued notice on a plea filed by Karnataka government against a November 23, 2021 order of the Karnataka High Court initiating contempt action for non-compliance with various previous orders of the High Court in relation to the matter."Issue notice. In the meantime, there shall be stay of further proceedings in the contempt petitions pending before the High Court," the Supreme Court ordered.The top court also directed the Karnataka government to file additional documents and affidavit explaining as to how the High Court orders which had attained finality in these cases, have already been complied with..The Karnataka High Court had rejected the compliance affidavit filed by the Principal Secretary, Rural Development and Panchayati Raj Department and posted the case for framing of charges against the Chief Secretary, Principal Secretary and other bureaucrats..The High Court had held so on the ground that there was non-compliance with the mandate of the Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court in State of Karnataka v Uma Devi & Ors which had held that the Centre and State governments should take steps to regularise those who have worked for ten years or more in sanctioned posts that are not covered by any court or tribunal orders.According to the plea before the top court, the High Court had noted that the State had regularised the services of certain individual respondents but the same benefit was not extended to daily wage workers in other cases. The plea before the Supreme Court said that the benefit was extended to 74 persons as was directed by the Supreme Court. There is no justification to provide the benefit to all persons who were not part of the case and whose requests for regularisation were rejected by the government. "The High Court hearing the contempt petition could not have exceeded its jurisdiction in practically issuing a mandamus to regularise the services of daily wage workers whose request had been rejected by specific orders passed by the government," the plea said.The Court hearing the contempt petition is required to consider if there is any positive direction to regularise the services of those daily wage workers, the petition added..[Read Order]