Date:30/03/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/03/30/stories/2008033054090400.htm

New Delhi

Contempt of court notice to ICAR Director-General

Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court has issued contempt of court notices to the Director-General of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), Mangla Rai, and several of its serving and former senior officials for defying a court order to not consider for selection an agriculture scientist for the post of Assistant Direct-General of the Council.

A Division Bench of the Court comprising Justice Mukul Mudgal and Justice P.K. Bhasin directed the officials to file replies to the contempt petition filed by the aggrieved scientist, S.S. Tomar, in two weeks. The Bench later fixed the petition to come up on May 16 for further hearing.

In the petition, Mr. Singh submitted that instead of complying with the order, the Council had initiated a departmental inquiry against him on frivolous charges of misbehaving with one of his junior staff and washing the dirty linen of the Council in public by planting stories about it in the media.

The Court had in 2006 directed the Council and the Agricultural Scientist Recruitment Board (ASRB) to consider Mr. Singh for the post subject to his being eligible.

The direction had come on a petition by Mr. Singh for his reinstatement to the post from which he had been removed in 2001.

Though the Board had taken up his application for selection to the post for consideration, it declared him ineligible for the post.