DEEPAK KHOSLA Vs. DELHI HIGH COURT

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This Contempt Petition has been preferred by the Petitioner against seven Respondents out of which Respondent No. 1 is Delhi High Court and Respondent No. 2 is Registrar of Delhi High Court. Other three Respondents are Advocates and two are private persons. In the Contempt Petition, the Petitioner has alleged that Registry of this Court had not followed the instructions given by a Division Bench of this Court vide Judgment "Deepak Khosla & Anr. Vs. Union of India" dated 8th October, 2009 in WP (C) 7651 of 2009. He submitted that this Court vide aforesaid judgment treated the Writ Petition as a Public Interest Litigation and issued directions in Para No. 12 & 13 of the judgment in respect of Vakalatnamas being filed in the Courts, more specifically when the Vakalatnama was executed not by the principal himself but by some person claiming to obtain or given authority on his behalf to another person.

(2.) The allegations made are that the directions of this Court, given in aforesaid Writ Petition and consequent circular were not followed by the Registry since it listed an O.M.P. No. 660 of 2009 dated 10th November, 2009 before this Court without complying with the directions given by the Division Bench in the aforesaid Writ Petition in respect of Vakalatnama. The petitioner has made Advocates as Contemnors on the ground that they were aware of the order of the High Court, but, still filed Vakalatnamas contrary to the directions of the High Court. Private persons have been made Contemnors on similar basis. The Petitioner also claimed cost of ' 66,000/- to be reimbursed to him by the Contemnors.

(3.) Section 2 Sub Sections (b). & (c). define Civil and Criminal Contempt as under: "(b) "Civil contempt" means willful disobedience to any judgment, decree, direction, order, writ or other process of a court or willful breach of an undertaking given to a court. (c) "Criminal contempt" means the publication (whether by words, spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representation, or otherwise) of any matter or the doing of any other act whatsoever which-