Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Mar 1: The Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT), Jammu Bench has stopped the salary of the Secretary, Service Selection Recruitment Board (SSRB) for non-compliance of the order.
The order in this regard has been passed by Judicial Member Rajinder Singh Dogra, who mentioned that the officer who is not obeying the orders of the court and not filing reply since a decade doesn’t deserve salary.
In the petition filed by N A Bhat in 2016 the High Court of Jammu and Kashmir issued notice and directed for filing the reply. Thereafter it was listed approximately 10 times in the High Court but the Board failed to file the reply.
In 2020 with the formation of Central Administrative Tribunal, Jammu Bench the case was transferred to the Bench and it was listed four times before the Bench but reply was not filed. When the case was listed on 31st December, 2021 Tribunal directed Service Selection Recruitment Board to file the reply within four weeks, failing which the erring officer/Secretary shall remain personally present but the officer neither bothered to appear before Tribunal through video conferencing to explain why the reply was not filed since last more than eight years.
Taking serious note of this, the Tribunal observed, “non-filing of the reply by the respondents leads to the unnecessary delay in giving the justice to the litigants and justice delayed is justice denied. The poor litigants who have no access to the Government, knock the door of Tribunal with the hope that they will get justice”.
“However, due to callous attitude of officers/officials, public faith in the judiciary is getting eroded. The innocent litigants cannot be made to suffer for the lackadaisical approach of the respondents”, the CAT said and accordingly directed the DDO not to release the salary of the Secretary till further order.
Moreover, Secretary has been directed to file the compliance affidavit to the effect that he has filed reply in this case as well as the cases pending up to the year 2020 because in hundreds of cases it has been observed by the Tribunal that SSRB has not filed the reply.
The Tribunal has also sent this order to the Chief Secretary of Jammu and Kashmir for the necessary compliance and to ensure that all the departments file replies in the pending cases to avoid any embarrassment to the officials/officers in future.
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