DA case: HC slaps criminal contempt notice on Punjab chief secretary

CHANDIGARH : The Punjab and Haryana High Court on Tuesday issued a criminal contempt notice to Punjab chief secretary KAP Sinha. The court said he gave it wrong information about the state’s Supreme Court appeal in the employees’ dearness allowance (DA) case.

On Monday, Sinha told the court that the government had removed the defects in its special leave petition (SLP) and filed it again. On Tuesday, a report placed before the bench of Chief Justice Ashwani Kumar Mishra and Justice Rohit Kapoor showed the defects flagged by the Supreme Court registry were still there.

The bench said that filing a faulty appeal again, almost a month after the first faulty filing, showed prima facie that the “attempt was only to misrepresent the facts before the Court.” It asked Sinha to explain why criminal contempt proceedings should not begin against him. It also ordered him to appear in person on Friday.

Advocate General Maninderjit Singh Bedi said the SLP was re-filed on October 1 and the registry may have raised fresh objections later. The court did not accept this. It said the message it was given was that the defects had been fixed.

Criminal contempt can lead to up to six months in jail, a fine of up to ₹2,000, or both.

₹14,191 crore owed to employees

The case concerns DA and dearness relief arrears of about ₹14,191 crore. Punjab’s DA has stayed at 42% while the Centre’s has risen to 60%.

On August 3, the high court ordered the state and PSPCL to pay all pending DA instalments within two weeks. The payment had to be at the rates given to IAS, IPS and IFS officers posted in Punjab, with 6% interest on any delay. The court also barred the government from big advertising campaigns until the dues are cleared. In that order, the court said that when DA is withheld, “the cost of inflation is transferred from the exchequer to the kitchen” of employees and pensioners.

Punjab moved the Supreme Court on September 1, saying it could not pay ₹14,191 crore in a fortnight. Employees then filed a contempt plea against Sinha and senior finance officers.

On September 18, the state announced an 8 percentage-point DA hike for about eight lakh employees and pensioners, effective October 1. The old arrears are still unpaid.

Sinha did not file the compliance affidavit the court had asked for, so the court summoned him for October 5. That appearance has now backfired.