2 IAS officers among four found guilty of contempt

Hyderabad: IAS officers Navin Mittal and Vakati Karuna along with two other officials were convicted of contempt of court by Telangana high court for circumventing its orders on reinstating a dismissed official.Justice P Madhavi Devi imposed a penalty of Rs 10,000 on each of them. The judge also directed that all four would have to undergo simple imprisonment of one month if they failed to pay the fine amount. The judge pronounced the verdict on July 3 after hearing a contempt case filed by K Srinivas Rao, a junior assistant in Government Model Degree College in Kalvakurthy in Nagarkurnool district. Srinivas was terminated from service by Mittal in his capacity as commissioner of collegiate education on August 5, 2022. Vakati Karuna was higher education secretary. The termination was challenged by Srinivas and the court had held that the commissioner had no jurisdiction as the law permitted only the regional joint director, in this case G Yadagiri, to take action against Srinivas. The court, while setting aside the termination order, left it open to Yadagiri to act in the matter in accordance with law. But after the court order the officials terminated him again and claimed that it was in compliance with the court order as they had done it as per the law.However, Srinivas filed a contempt petition charging the officials with acting against him with more contempt and prejudice. The judge verified the record and concluded that the officials had wilfully disobeyed the order of the court by interpreting the order in a manner that suited them. “Since the court had set aside the order of termination, the natural course left for the officials was to reinstate Srinivas first before launching any disciplinary proceedings,” Justice Madhavi Devi said. The court came to the conclusion that officials had terminated him without reinstating him in his job since they paid his salary for two months only after the contempt plea was filed and being questioned by the court. The accused officers claimed he was reinstated and removed only after two months and cited salary paid to him. The judge felt they were cooking up this theory to escape punishment. “This is a clever circumvention of court orders,” the judge said while convicting the two IAS officers along with Yadagiri and R Swarnalatha, the principal of the college.