The Contempt of Courts Act does not confer the power of review, and therefore, a review application in a contempt jurisdiction under Section 12 is not maintainable.

JUDGMENT

Sharad Kumar Sharma, J. - The matter is heard through video conferencing.

2. Its anguishing to observe, that the learned counsel for the petitioner after arguing this review, in contempt petition for about 4 days. On the previous dates fixed for arguments, on the issue of maintainability of the review application in a contempt proceedings, which are drawn under Section 12/14 of the Contempt of Courts Act, had expressed an unprecedented and uncalled for apprehension, requesting the Court that while deciding the review application his arguments to be considered in detail by the Court, whether they are relevant or not for deciding the controversy.

3. It is an uncalled for gesture, which has been expressed by the learned counsel for the review applicant, even otherwise also, I am of the opinion that, the Court is bound to consider the argument extended by the learned counsel and has to record its reasoning for not accepting the same.

4. The contempt petition in question has been titled as to be a contempt petition, which has been preferred by the applicant, under Section 12 of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971. The applicant therein had alleged non-compliance of the judgment dated 17.04.2018 as rendered by the learned Single judge, in Writ Petition No. 154 of 2017 Himanshu Joshi vs. State of Uttarakhand and Others', as well as the judgment dated 20.07.2018 as rendered by the Division Bench of this Court, in Special Appeal No. 342 of 2018, titled as Dr. Priyanka Arora and Others vs. Himanshu Joshi and Others'. As per the judgment rendered by the learned Single Judge in its judgment dated 17.04.2018, the Court had passed the following orders particularly those the directions as contained in paragraph 24 and 27 of the judgment, which were sought to be complied, which are quoted hereunder:

"24. However, it is made clear that for all such posts on which the regularization was being made pursuant to the amendment of 2016 though the Government cannot regularize the ad hoc, temporary or contractual employees on these posts but these 17 posts cannot remain vacant as well, therefore, Government shall take immediate steps for filling up these vacancies in accordance with law and as per the prescribed selection procedure, but since some of the candidates might be working on these sanctioned posts for the last many years, the Government would always be at liberty to grant a reasonable "weightage point" and "age relaxation" to such candidates, in making regular selection on those posts by making these posts available by way of an open competition.

27. Therefore as regarding the interveners who are Staff Nurses and Lab Technicians in "Veer Chandra Singh Garhwali Government Medical Science and Research Institute, Srinagar", although their regularization still cannot be made in terms of the amendment made in the year 2016, for the simple reason that the amendment itself has been quashed and set aside, but this itself will not restrict the State Government from regularizing their services independently as a one-time measure as that would 19 be in terms of the exception created by the Hon'ble Apex Court in Umadevi."

5. The interveners of the above writ petition feeling themselves to be aggrieved against the judgment of the learned Single Judge dated 17.04.2018 had preferred a special appeal, being Special Appeal No. 342 of 2018. The special appeal, thus filed was decided by the Division Bench, vide its judgment dated 20.07.2018, of which I was also one of the members. The special appeal was decided with the following directions as contained in paragraph-16 of the judgment, which is quoted hereunder:

"16. Having rendered the above discussion, the upshot of the same will be as follows:

The Appeal is disposed of as follows:

We make it clear that the direction contained in Paragraph 24 of the impugned judgment need not be understood as a direction to immediately dislodge the appellants. The Government will be free to take a decision in this regar