Hyderabad: 5 officers held in contempt, get 2-month imprisonment

Hyderabad: Taking a serious view of non-implementation of court orders and  non- responding to contempt notices, Justice P. Naveen Rao of the Telangana High Court sentenced the district educational officers (DEOs) of Karimnagar, Warangal, Khammam and Nalgonda districts on Thursday to two months’ imprisonment and imposed a fine of Rs 2,000 each in a contempt case filed by some aspiring candidates of the DSC-1998 test.

When a controversy arose about reducing the qualifying marks in the written exams for the teachers’ posts notified in DSC-1998, the administrative tribunal directed the authorities to revise the merit list of the selected candidates and appoint the petitioner candidates based on merit. The High Court also upheld the Tribunal orders. When the authorities failed to implement the same, the candidates filed the present contempt case. On an earlier occasion, the court summoned the above four DEOs for negligence in implementation of the earlier order of the court.

As directed by the High Court, on Thursday, the four DEOs appeared before Justice Naveen Rao dealing with the contempt case filed by aspiring candidates, alleging large scale irregularities in the DSC-1998 examination and that the orders of administrative tribunal and the court were deliberately not being implemented. They pointed out several discrepancies even in the revised merit list. The DEOs submitted that they were new to the post and were not aware of the two decade old case.

Counsel for TS submitted that there were no records available in respect of Nalgonda district due to a fire accident. The selection list was prepared based on available records, he added. Not satisfied with the above submissions, the judge sentenced the four DEOs to two months’ imprisonment and a fine of Rs 2,000 each to be paid in two weeks. He however, suspended the order for six weeks to enable the contemnors to file an appeal against the sentence imposed against them.