SUMAN K SHRIVASTAVA
Ranchi, April 15: The Jharkhand High Court has issued a warrant of arrest against Transport Secretary K Srinivasan for an ‘outrageous defiance’ of the repeated orders issued by the court in a contempt case involving appointment of the motor vehicle inspectors (MVIs) pending for over two decades.
The Ranchi Senior Superintendent of Police has been directed to
personally execute the bailable Warrant of Arrest and produce K. Srinivasan before the court on April 17 at 1:15 PM.
The contempt petition has been filed by one Sunil Kumar Paswan.
A single bench of Justice S Chandrashekhar, in its order issued on April 13, has observed that inspite of a direction issued to the Secretary of the Department of Transport, Government of Jharkhand to file his personal affidavit by March 29, he has failed to file an affidavit as yet.
“This is necessary to indicate that on 29th March 2023 further two weeks’ time for filing an affidavit as directed by this Court was granted to the Secretary of the Department of Transport, Government of Jharkhand. However, he has failed to comply with the direction of this Court,” Justice Chandrashekhar observed.
The court declined the government counsel, Rahul Saboo’s request for an order to ensure Srinivasan’s personal appearance, on the grounds that the conduct of the Transport Secretary is sort of an outrageous defiance of the direction.
Notably, the court had sought an affidavit from the Transport Secretary after the government counsel had informed it during the last hearing in March that there are about 49 sanctioned posts of the Motor Vehicle Inspectors against which only 3 persons have been regularly appointed and about 15 persons are on deputation from the Department of Water Resources and the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation, Government of Jharkhand.
Paswan’s counsel Krishna Murari stated that notwithstanding a series of orders passed by this Court the Department of Transport, Government of Jharkhand has not made appointments on regular basis rather continued to bring ineligible persons on deputation for discharging duties of the Motor Vehicle Inspectors.
Incidentally, it was the court of Justice Chandrashekhar, while hearing a petition, had directed the Jharkhand government way back in 2015 to ensure that a person who is not competent to hold the post of Motor Vehicle Inspector may not be deputed to such post. “The process of selection and appointment of Motor Vehicle Inspector may be completed, at the earliest,” the court order said.
The petition had been filed then challenging the deputation and posting of a person as Motor Vehicle Inspector, Dhanbad on the ground that he lacks essential eligibility qualification in terms of Motor Vehicles Rules 1989 and the Jharkhand Motor Vehicles Rules, 2010 and for quashing notification whereby the respondent no. 5 has been taken on deputation from PHED (now DW&S Department) to the Transport Department.
But the government adopted a dilly-dallying approach all these years in violation of the court’s 2015 order prompting Paswan to file a contempt petition now in the Jharkhand high court.
Notably, the post of MVI, manned by incompetent persons since creation of Jharkhand has always been lucrative jobs prompting successive political masters and bureaucrats to use them as their milch cows. These MVIs had been so powerful and cash-rich that they had even funded to topple and install a government of their choice at one point of time in Jharkhand.
