Contempt proceedings cannot be extended to enforce relief for original applicants who are not petitioners.

In O.A. No. 577/2022, the Tribunal had directed the respondents to grant revised pay scales to 211 applicants from 1 January 1996, with consequential benefits and arrears.

The Allahabad High Court subsequently stayed the payment of arrears and certain emoluments up to 21 April 2004, while directing notional enhancement from 1 January 1996 and actual payment, including arrears, from 21 April 2004.

Seven of the original applicants filed this contempt petition alleging non-compliance.

The respondents filed an affidavit stating that pay fixation had been made for those seven applicants, arrears had been paid to five, and payment bills for the remaining two had been sent to the PAO.

The petitioners objected that compliance was required for all 211 applicants.

At the hearing, the respondents produced bank transaction details and submitted that all seven contempt petitioners had been paid.

1. Whether the respondents’ compliance in respect of the seven contempt petitioners, but not demonstrably all 211 O.A. applicants, amounted to wilful disobedience of the Tribunal’s order.

2. Whether the contempt proceedings should be closed where the seven petitioners’ claims had been complied with and the other O.A. applicants had not filed contempt proceedings.

Section 17 of the Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985, provides the Tribunal’s contempt jurisdiction.

The governing principle is that contempt requires wilful disobedience; non-compliance alone is insufficient unless it is conscious and deliberate.

The petitioners cited Niaz Mohammad v. State of Haryana, (1994) 6 SCC 332, and Kapildeo Prasad Sah v. State of Bihar for that principle, and Sudhir Vasudeva v. M. George Ravishekaran, (2014) 3 SCC 373, for the requirement that a court exercise contempt jurisdiction cautiously and not go beyond the express directions of the order.

The Tribunal’s reasoning also treated the contempt petition as concerning the alleged non-compliance affecting its named petitioners.

The Tribunal noted that the contempt petition had been brought by seven applicants and that the compliance affidavit and payment material related to those seven; it accepted the respondents’ submission that all seven had been paid.

It considered it erroneous to presume that the seven petitioners were pursuing contempt on behalf of all 211 O.A. applicants, observing that the other applicants could have filed contempt proceedings if aggrieved.

On that basis, it found no wilful disobedience by the respondents in the case before it, notwithstanding the petitioners’ contention that the original orders covered all 211 applicants.

It closed the contempt proceedings, discharged the notices issued to the respondents, and disposed of any pending miscellaneous application.