Vague charge of contempt is not a fair or permissible

In Nagar Mahapalika of the City of Kanpur v. Mohan Singh 1966 SCC OnLine SC 1 it is read as under; “An allegation of contempt of court is a serious one and is considered by courts with a certain amount of strictness A person against whom such an allegation is made is entitled to be told the precise nature of it. Vague charge of contempt is not a fair or permissible way of charging a person with contempt of court. The contempt alleged cannot be left to be spelt out from the allegations made nor can the 23 person charged be left to guess what contempt is alleged against him. these defects are serious." "We will deal first with the case of the Municipality. It will have been noticed that it was not the respondent's case that the Municipality had issued any new licence after the order of July 14, 1961. In fact, it was conceded that it did not do so. What was said was that the Municipality adopted a practice of realising rickshaw taxes from the owners and printing the fact of the receipt of the tax on the rickshaws and permitting them to ply without licences. The way the case seems to have been put before the High Court was that this was a subterfuge adopted by the Municipality to get round the order of the High Court, the object of which was to stop new rickshaws plying for hire, by permitting rickshaws to ply without a licence on payment of the tax. This contention was accepted by the High Court. It seems to us somewhat unfortunate that the matter proceeded in this way. An allegation of contempt of court is a serious one and is considered by courts with a certain amount of strictness. A person against whom such an allegation is made is entitled to be told the precise nature of it. In this case the respondent did not state that any subterfuge had been adopted by the Municipality or that the Municipality had sought to defeat the orders of the courts; that was only insinuated. This is not a fair or permissible way of charging a person with contempt of court. The contempt alleged cannot be left to be spelt out from the allegations made nor can the person charged be left to guess what contempt is alleged against him. Further, paragraph 8 of the petition for committal for contempt stated that there was a direct contravention of the 24 order which of course, there was not as no licences had been issued. Neither were any particulars given as to how the alleged practice that was adopted was intended to get round the order, nor of how the Municipality permitted rickshaws to ply without licences. We think the learned AttorneyGeneral was perfectly justified in drawing our attention to these defects in the petition and characterizing them as serious."