Court summons two IAS officers in contempt case

HYDERABAD: A division bench of the AP High Court on Friday summoned two senior IAS officers of the endowments department KV Ramanachary, principal secretary and JSV Prasad, commissioner endowments in connection with charges of wanton violation of orders of the court.The bench comprising justice G. Raghuram and justice Ramesh Ranganathan was dealing with a contempt petition filed by Ganga Raj Kumar complaining that the officials had failed to constitute the Trust Board of the Dwarka Tirumala temple in accordance with directions of the High Court.The petitioner pointed out that the officials had even failed to appoint a proper Trust Board for the temple leading to his filing a writ petition. The bench on March 25 allowed his petition and directed the authorities to appoint the Trust Board.An application by SV Sudhakar Rao, who was managing the affairs of the temple to grant the temple exemption form the relevant provisions was also dismissed by the court. After the High court made its order the petitioner communicated the same to the authorities and even after receipt of the order the officials did not act in the matter. The bench found prima facie that the authorities had not acted on its directions and had therefore committed contempt. The contemnors were given four weeks time to appear before the court.A different bench comprising justice V. Eshwariah and justice Vilas Afzalpurkar in a separate case closed another contempt case against the said officers after accepting apologies from the same officers of the endowments department.To the uninitiated the bench had faulted the officers for not implementing the order of the bench in a service matter and granting promotions to an employee in the endowments department.The bench last Friday had declared that the inaction of the officers amounted to contempt of court. However, on Friday the bench took on file the unconditional apology from the bureaucrats and closed the contempt case.