Hyderabad, April 09: In an unprecedented move, the Andhra Pradesh High Court on Friday sentenced two senior IAS officers to two weeks’ imprisonment for contempt of court.
A division bench of the high court, comprising Justice G Raghuram and Justice Ramesh Ranganathan, sent Principal Secretary for Municipal Administration and Urban Development Pushpa Subramanyam and Municipal Administration Commissioner Dr Prem Chand to the civil prison for a fortnight and another contemnor (a person or entity guilty of contempt before a judicial or legislative body) Venkateshwarloo, Commissioner of the Nalgonda municipality, for a month. The trio were also ordered to pay a fine of Rs 2,000 each.
The bench was dealing with a contempt case arising out of an order it had issued in August 2009 under which the government was directed to auction lease hold rights of Prem Talkies, a theatre in Nalgonda.
The court had faulted the government for leasing out the property to the then municipal chairman.
Following the directive, though the government issued an auction notice, it later suspended the same.
The government and the authorities proceeded to auction the lease hold rights only in November 2010 after the filing of the contempt case.
Justifying the seemingly harsh sentence, Justice Ramesh Ranganathan, in the judgment, pointed out, “Rule of Law is the foundation of a democratic society and judiciary is its guardian. The apology rendered by the contemnors did not impress the bench. A mere statement made by a contemnor before the court that he apologises is hardly enough to amount to purging himself of contempt.
The court must be satisfied of the genuineness of the apology.”
On the suspension of the auction notice despite directions from the high court, Justice Ramesh Ranganathan said, “such open defiance of the order of the court is contempt of such nature as to have substantially interfered with the course of justice for which imposition of a sentence of fine alone would not meet the ends of justice.”
—Agencies