VISITORS

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Dr. AK Handa wrote

Dear Sirs,
  • Recently the Chandigarh bench of AFT heard a bunch of contempt petitions, May 21- 23 2012, being designated by the honourable court for this purpose.
  • DACP case too came up for hearing.
  • In the affidavit filed by one of the respondents to the contempt proceedings, a prayer was made to the honourable court to grant another six months as the file had come back from Department of Personnel & Training (DoPT) in April 2012 (after being there for almost two months) with some observations, which needed to be discussed & sorted out at Ministry of Defence (MoD).
  • The honourable judge however was of the opinion that this was not the stage for sorting out the observations for which adequate time had already been given, but for implementation of its judgement. He rightly observed that besides the three months time limit given by the court in its judgement dated 18 Jul 2011 for implementation of the DACP for the armed forces doctors (Aug 2011 to Nov 2011),another additional approximately six months had elapsed since then (Nov 2011 to May 2012) without DACP seeing the light of the day. He also observed that once a contempt notice has been filed, these prayers are infructuous. Besides, as alluded to in the contempt prayer dated 18 Mar 2012, by the respondents own admission, they had agreed to implement the DACP scheme for uniformed doctors by 31 Dec 2011, which too had not been honoured. 
  • Hence the court refused to accept the plea for an additional six months time.
  • Hence the contempt petition has not been disposed off, with the honourable court giving a fresh date of 9 Aug 2012 for the respondents to inform the court about the progress with regards to  implementation of DACP scheme.
  • The Chandigarh bench of AFT would be on summer vacation in the month of June 2012.
  • It needs to be seen what fresh prayers would be put up to the court on 9 Aug 2012..!  
  • Keeping fingers firmly crossed & thought of sharing the same with all of you.  
Warm Regards,

AKH