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The Punjab & Haryana High Court today issued contempt notice against Chief Secretary KP Sinha over misrepresenting facts about the filing of Punjab government's appeal before the Supreme Court against the High Court's recent order for payment of pending dearness allowance (DA) to government employees.

In August, the High Court had dismissed a batch of Letters Patent Appeals filed by the Punjab Government and Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL), affirming that once the State adopted the Central Government pattern for grant of Dearness Allowance and Dearness Relief, it incurred a binding obligation to release the accrued instalments and could not defer them indefinitely under the guise of financial constraint.

In the Previous hearing, the Court had sought status of filing of the SLP against the High Court's order.

Chief Justice Ashwani Kumar Mishra and Justice Rohit Kapoor perusing the report noted that the the defects pointed out by the Supreme Court Registry have not been removed, contrary to the statement made by the Chief Secretary in yesterday's hearing that the government had re-filed the SLP after removing the defects. It thus sought an explanation from Chief Secretary.

"We are issuing notice to the Chief Secretary to explain as to why proceedings of criminal contempt be not initiated against him" said the bench.

AG Punjab Maninderjit Singh Bedi submitted that the SLP was re-filed on October 01 and the Registry may subsequently have raised some objections. 

However the Court noted, "When the statement was made that appeal has been re-filed, what was intended to be conveyed to the Court was that defects in the filing of the appeal have been cured...re-fling a defective appeal when almost a month has expired since filing of the defective appeal prima facie indicates that attempt was only to misrepresent the facts before the Court."

Summoning the physical presence of Chief Secretary, the matter is now listed for Friday.

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