The High Court has jurisdiction to entertain contempt applications despite the merger of orders, and the limitation period for initiating contempt proceedings begins to run from the date fixed for compliance or the date of receipt of the order by the contemnor, and is suspended during the pendency of an appeal if a stay is granted.

( 1 ) THE petitioner filed on July 17, 1989, this Contempt Case against the respondent. The office has raised the objection thus : "it may be stated as how this contempt case is said to be filed in time. ".

( 2 ) IT is represented by the learned counsel that against the order of termination of the petitioner from service on October 17, 1981, Writ Petition No. 8692/81 was filed. By judgement dated January 19, 1985, the writ petition was allowed and the order of termination was quashed. Against that, Writ Appeal No. 361/85 was filed and by order dated November 20, 1987, the writ appeal was dismissed without much discussion, though after hearing both sides. The respondent carried the matter to Supreme Court in S. L. P. No. 12714 of 1988 and by order dated February 20, 1989, the leave petition was dismissed. After dismissal of the appeal by the Division Bench, the petitioner has submitted a representation on June 24, 1988, followed by further representations dated August 12, 1988 and October 5, 1988, for implementation of the order. It evoked no response. Despite submitting his joining report on November 3, 1988 the petitioner was not taken into service. A legal notice dated December 8, 1988 was also issued to the respondent. Thus he represented with the endorsement that the contempt proceedings are within limitation. The office posted for orders of the Court. Notice was issued to the counsel for the respondent Sri N. V. Suryanarayana Murthy, learned counsel raised a further objection that in view of the fact that the order passed by the learned single Judge is merged in the order of the Division Bench which was upheld by the Supreme Court in the S. L. P. , this Court has no jurisdiction to entertain the contempt application. If the remedy is available, it would be in the Supreme Court. In support thereof, he relied on Gojer Brothers v. Ratan Lal, AIR 1974 SC 1380. 2-A. The first question, therefore, is whether this Court has jurisdiction to entertain the application for contempt under S. 12 of the Contempt of Courts Act (Act 70 of 1971), for short, "the Act. "

( 3 ) S. 12 (1) of the Act provides punishment for Contempt of Court with simple imprisonment for a term which may extend to six months or with fine which may extend to two thousand rupees, or with both. "civil contempt" defined under S. 2 (B) means wilful disobedience to any judgement, decree, direction, order, writ or other process of a Court or wilful breach of an undertaking given to a Court. It is seen that the order of termination of the services of the petitioner was quashed in W. P. No. 8692/81 by judgement dated January 19, 1985 for multiplicity of reasons and was confirmed in writ appeal. Special leave petition was summarily dismissed thus : "special Leave is dismissed". The immediate question is whether the order passed by this Court is merged with the order of the Supreme Court and thereby this Court is devoid of jurisdiction to entertain the proceedings for contempt for disobedience of the order. In U. J. S. Chopra v. State of Bombay, AIR 1955 SC 633 per majority, it was held that a judgement pronounced by the High Court exercising appellate or revisional jurisdiction after issue of notice to the parties and full hearing, its judgement replaces the judgement of the lower Court thus constituting that the judgement of the High Court is the final judgement "to be executed in accordance with law, by the Court below". I.-T. Commr. of Amritlal Bhogilal and Co. , AIR 1958 SC 868 held that if an appeal is provided against an order passed by a tribunal, the decision of the appellate authority is the operative decision in law irrespective of whether it confirms, modifies or reverses the decision of the tribunal. In law, the position would be just the same even if the appellate decision merely confirms the decision of the tribunal. As a result of the confirmation or affirmation of the decision of the tribunal by the appellate authority the original decisio