Comply with our orders or appear, Telangana HC warns top medical dept officials

HYDERABAD: The Telangana High Court has warned Christina Z. Chongthu, principal secretary, health; K. Rama Krishna Rao, special chief secretary, and Dr Ravindra Nayak, director of public health, to comply with its orders regarding considering the temporary service of some medical staff in the sanction of pension or appear personally before the court on September 27.

Justice Surepalli Nanda gave one last chance to the officials, while dealing with a contempt case filed by field workers in urban malaria centres.

The field workers were appointed as daily wage workers in the 1990s on a temporary basis and their services were regularised in 2010. The department did not consider their temporary service in the sanction of pension. Challenging the same, the petitioners had in 2019 approached the High Court. Justice Nanda in 2022, by citing the law laid down by the Supreme Court in ‘Jharkhand vs Jitendra Kumar Srivastava’, directed the officials to consider the temporary service period of the field officers for sanction of pension. The officials did not comply with the court orders, the petitioners said.