Bhubaneswar, November 1: The Orissa High Court has issued contempt notices to Chief Secretary Anu Garg and Principal Secretary of the Food Supplies and Consumer Welfare Department Sanjay Kumar Singh over alleged non-compliance with its direction to fill vacancies in the State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (SCDRC) within six months.

A division bench comprising Chief Justice Harish Tandon and Justice M.S. Raman issued the notices while hearing a contempt petition alleging that the state government had failed to comply with the court's order dated August 20, 2025. The bench fixed November 26 for the next hearing.

The contempt petition was filed by Cuttack resident Sonali Swain through her advocate Mohit Agarwal. She alleged that the government had failed to act on the directions issued by the High Court in her public interest litigation (PIL), despite the stipulated six-month deadline.

The original PIL had drawn the court's attention to several vacancies in the SCDRC, which were affecting the functioning of the consumer dispute redressal mechanism.

According to information from the Right to Information (RTI) Act and cited in the contempt petition, the post of SCDRC president had remained vacant since July 3, 2023. One of the four member posts fell vacant on March 4, 2026, while the post of joint registrar had been vacant since February 28, 2023.

The petition also pointed out vacancies in several other positions, including personal assistant, senior and junior stenographers, junior assistant, driver, process server and five peon posts.

While disposing of the PIL on August 20, 2025, the High Court had observed that filling up vacancies in the SCDRC was a statutory obligation of the state government under Section 46 of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019. It had made it clear that the government could not evade this responsibility.

The court had also emphasised that consumers approaching the quasi-judicial body for grievance redressal should not be forced to wait indefinitely because of staff shortages.

To ensure the uninterrupted functioning of consumer commissions and timely disposal of cases, the High Court had directed the state government to begin recruitment at least six months before an anticipated vacancy arises.

The present contempt proceedings have been initiated over the alleged failure of the authorities to implement those directions.