AP High Court upset at AP Tribunal order

By S A Ishaqui

Hyderabad, Dec. 24: A division bench comprising Justice V. Eswaraiah and Justice Vilas V. Afzulpurkar of the AP High Court on Friday expressed displeasure over an order passed by the AP Administrative Tribunal and issued notice to the Attorney-General of India to assist the court to decide on a question on whether the tribunal is competent to pass an order contrary to the order of the High Court.

The bench was dealing with a contempt petition filed by one Mr K. Narasimha Murthy, an official of the endowments department seeking a direction to punish the principal secretary to the endowments and the commissioner of endowments under the contempt of Courts Act for not reverting Mr Veerendra Varma from the post of the deputy commissioner despite court orders.

According to the petitioner, Mr Varma has been fighting a legal battle for his promotion by seeking a direction to amend the service rules with retrospective effect.

Earlier, the tribunal granted an order in favour of Mr Varma and the High Court set aside the order based on a petition filed by Mr Murthy against the tribunal’s order.

The judges opined that “the presence of Attorney General of India is necessary to deal with the situation wherein the peculiar circumstances had arisen due to passing of orders by the tribunal which are not completely in tune with the letter and spirit of the orders passed by the High Court.”

While admitting the contempt petition, the bench posted the case to February 4,2011.