New Delhi, March 05 (HS): The Supreme Court has issued a contempt notice to the Chief Secretary of Punjab for not implementing a pension scheme of three decades ago.

A bench headed by Justice AS Oka said that the court’s order cannot be taken lightly and the Chief Secretary of the state will have to respond to the contempt notice. The next hearing of the case will be on March 24.

The Justices expressed frustration over misleading statements and indicated a contempt notice would be issued, condemning the government’s dishonorable behavior and demanding future statements be backed by affidavits.

During the hearing, Advocate Gurminder Singh, appearing on behalf of the Punjab government, assured the court that he would give some positive information regarding the implementation of this scheme on the next date of hearing.

The petition has been filed by Rajneesh Kumar and others. The petition states that the 1996 law related to pension benefit scheme is not being implemented in the private colleges of Punjab. For this, the petitioner had earlier filed petitions in the Punjab and Haryana High Court. In the High Court, the Punjab government said through an affidavit that this scheme would be implemented from 25 June 2002, but it was not implemented.

Hindusthan Samachar / Jun Sarkar