Leaves a widow to fend for herself
Srinagar: The Soil Conservation Department has disobeyed the orders of Supreme Court and State High Court over regularization of a woman casual labour.
Shahida Bano, widow of late Manzoor Ahmad Malik of Haigam, Sopore, was appointed as casual labour in Soil Conservation Department of Forest ministry in 1998.
But Shahida, mother of two children, was not regularized by the department even after her uninterrupted duty for 17 years till now despite her repeated pleas to ministers and top officials of the department.
Aggrieved with the attitude of the bureaucracy and ministers, she took her struggle to the High Court in 2005 and filed a write petition.
Then a single bench of the High Court ordered the department to regularize her. The department, however, filed a Letters Patent Appeal (LPA) before the Division bench of the High Court, which in July this year upheld the Single Benchs order and directed the department to implement the order and pay the arrears of salary and other benefits to her within a period of four weeks form the day of direction.
To get the order of the High Court vacated, the department filed a Special Leave Petition in the Supreme Court. But the Apex Court ruled out that we do not find any legal and valid ground for interference. The Special Leave Petition is dismissed.
However, Bano said that the department has not obeyed any order of the courts.
Where will I go now to seek justice? Such is the level of the department that it does not respect the court, distraught Bano said. KNS