New Delhi:For more than two years now, a rather telling standoff has been playing out between the Ministry of Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises and the Delhi High Court. At the centre of it is a contempt petition against MSME Secretary Subhash Chandra Lal Das — a reminder of how bureaucratic reluctance can turn even a clear judicial directive into an administrative maze.

The origins of this dispute go back to the Sixth Pay Commission’s recommendation, which rationalised pay scales for Hindi-related posts across government departments. Everyone in that cadre benefited — except one post: Assistant Editor (Hindi) in the MSME Ministry. The omission may have been bureaucratic oversight, or perhaps simply inertia, but the result was a glaring pay imbalance that forced the affected officer, former Joint Director Harendra Pratap Singh, into a long legal odyssey.

Since 2010, the matter has ricocheted through the labyrinth of Indian adjudication: three rounds at the Central Administrative Tribunal, two at the Delhi High Court, and even a detour to the Supreme Court — where the government’s position failed to find favour. Eventually, the Delhi High Court’s August 31, 2022 judgment explicitly directed the ministry to correct the anomaly.

Yet what followed was partial compliance at best. The ministry insists it has honoured the order. Singh says otherwise. And this is where the dispute stops being just a service-matter scuffle and starts raising uncomfortable questions about administrative accountability. According to Singh, the ministry has not carried out the most crucial element of the court’s directive: amending recruitment rules and related government notifications to reflect the upgraded pay scale. In other words, the paperwork that gives a judgment its real-world effect is still missing.

The result? A contempt petition, filed in 2023, still unresolved. Another hearing now looms on December 10. For an officer who has spent more than a decade fighting for parity granted by a Pay Commission — and repeatedly upheld by courts — the delay is more than procedural; it feels like institutional indifference.

What this episode ultimately underscores is a larger malaise: when ministries treat judicial orders as optional drafts, justice doesn’t just get delayed — it gets diluted. Courts may pronounce judgments, but unless the executive acts with intent, the system remains trapped in a cycle where compliance becomes negotiable.

And that is perhaps the most troubling aspect of this entire saga.

Special Report by Manjari