Neeraj Rohmetra
JAMMU, Aug 7: Admonishing bureaucrats and Head of Departments of the State for their failure to file reply affidavits and compliance reports in respect of various Public Interest Litigations (PILs) before the High Court, the State Government today issued fresh instructions to avoid any delay in filing responses in the Court.
“Due to failure on part of Departments to file response before the High Court in various cases on time, adverse orders have been issued by the High Court on several occasions. In several cases, the High Court had sought personal appearance of senior functionaries of the Government including the Chief Secretary as well, which caused major embarrassment to the Government”, sources asserted.
The fresh instructions had been issued in a circular no. 15-GAD of 2013 dated August 7, 2013 and copies of the same had been sent to all the Administrative Secretaries, Principal Secretaries of the Chief Minister and Governor, Divisional Commissioner Jammu and Kashmir and all the Head of Departments, Managing Directors and Chief Executives of the Public Sector Undertakings (PSU).
Sources asserted, “Chief Justice High Court, M M Kumar had also expressed his displeasure over the failure of the State Government Department to submit reply affidavit and compliance report in various PILs”.
Advocate General, M I Qadri had also discussed the issue in details with Chief Secretary, Iqbal Khandey and informed him that a number of Public Interest Litigations (PILs) were pending in High Court and the status/ compliance reports need to be filed by the Government Department.
“Most of the replies are submitted quite late and these aren’t accepted by the High Court Registry. Failure of the Departments to file response in time leads to passing of adverse orders by the Courts”, sources said.
The new GAD circular impressed upon all the Government functionaries to file reply affidavits and compliance reports and Action Taken Reports (ATR) in respect of various PILs in time, well before the date of hearing. “The Law Officers of the concerned Department shall keep close liaisoning with the Office of the Advocate General to avoid any delay in filing responses in the High Court”, says the circular.
“In case of failure of any Department to file response before the High Court on time, concerned Law Officer of the department shall be held responsible and action initiated against him in accordance with the rules”, says the document.
Earlier, Advocate General , M I Qadri had also written a letter no. AGI 911 dated July 25, 2013 to the General Administration Department (GAD) airing his concern over failure of Government functionaries to file Replies/ Status/ Compliance Reports in various PILs on priority basis.
“The letter from Advocate General had touched upon three important points including delay in filing reply on priority basis, absence of Law Officials of the concerned Department in Court and failure to inform the High Court about the status of information pertaining to their cases”, sources said.
“The Law Officials had become habitual of filing delayed replies and the High Court Registry often refused to entertain the same. Some of the replies were filed on the day of listing of the case and few others were filed only a day before. This lead to adjournment of several important cases even for petty reasons”, sources said.
Regretting the attitude of law officials of various Government Departments, sources said, “most of the law officials were absent during the hearing of their respective cases. They were required to share the status of all reports with the Advocate General before the case came up for hearing, but that didn’t happen”.
Sources further emphasized, “several High Court Judges were irked to see that the Department officials had not even furnished the status reports, when their cases came up for hearing”.
Advocate General, M I Qadri, when contacted confirmed, “the failure of the Departments to file response before High Court in various cases on time had lead to various adverse orders. Several top functionaries had been put to embarrassing situations in the Court as their Departments failed to file reports in time”.
Secretary, General Administration Department (GAD), M A Bukhari while confirming issuance of the order said, “the objective of the order is to avoid delays in filing of replies in the Court in time. This had become necessary as a number of PILs are pending in the High Court and reply affidavits hadn’t been filed by several Government Departments”.
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