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PoliticsCourts

Supreme Court halts criminal contempt case against Punjab Chief Secretary over DA arrears

Justices B V Nagarathna and R Mahadevan stayed a High Court show-cause notice to KAP Sinha, issued after a dispute over dearness allowance dues to state employees and pensioners.

From the editorial desk · New DelhiPublished

Key points

  1. The Supreme Court stayed the criminal contempt case against Punjab Chief Secretary KAP Sinha.
  2. The High Court had issued him a show-cause notice on 12 October.
  3. Punjab told the court it has already paid about ₹5,000 crore in arrears.

The Supreme Court on Thursday stayed criminal contempt proceedings against Punjab Chief Secretary KAP Sinha, pausing a High Court case that grew out of the state’s long delay in paying dearness allowance arrears to its employees and pensioners.

A bench of Justices B V Nagarathna and R Mahadevan stayed the Punjab and Haryana High Court’s 12 October order that asked Sinha to show cause why he should not face criminal contempt, and halted all further proceedings in that case “till further orders”. “We have perused the impugned orders,” the bench said. Earlier in the day a bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant had agreed to take the state’s plea up at once.

The dispute goes back to the High Court’s 3 August order directing Punjab to clear pending dearness allowance and dearness relief arrears by 18 August. A retired chief engineer of the state power utility PSPCL then moved a contempt petition, saying the order had not been obeyed. The criminal contempt notice from Justice Harsh Bunger arose from what the court saw as a misstatement in a state affidavit about the status of Punjab’s appeal in the Supreme Court.

Appearing for the state, senior advocate Vikas Singh said Punjab had already paid about ₹5,000 crore under a plan to clear the dues. The state argued that criminal contempt could not be used to bypass the procedure for enforcing payment. A separate civil contempt petition over the arrears is still pending in the High Court.

The High Court had told Sinha to file a compliance affidavit by 13 November and to appear in person on 17 November.