Cuttack, Oct. 23: Orissa High Court has issued contempt notices to the health secretary and the director of medical education and training directorate for failing to initiate the process for filling up 26 posts of assistant professors at SCB Medical College and Hospital.

The government had created the posts in the Orissa Medical Education Service Cadre “for expansion and strengthening of medical education and patient care” in different departments of SCB. However, the recruitment process had not started even after five months of concurrence of state finance department and sanction of the governor.

The delay came to the fore during the adjudication of a PIL on insufficient patient care service in different departments of the SCB. Akhay Kumar Pattanaik had filed the PIL seeking judicial intervention against alleged lack of doctors at the hospital.

After the health secretary and the director of medical education and training made personal appearances in the case on September 26, the court had directed them to send a proposal to Orissa Public Service Commission within a week to start the recruitment process for posts of assistant professor created at SCB.

But a contempt petition alleged non-compliance of the order on Thursday. There was “deliberate and wilful violation of the order” as the two officials have “slept over the matter and not taken any steps”, S.H. Ali Rizwan, 57, alleged in his contempt petition.

“Taking note of it, the two-judge bench of Justice Bimal Prasad Das and Justice Indrajeet Mohanty had issued notices to health secretary Anu Garg and medical education and training director Prasanna Kumar Das,” petitioner counsel Jaydip Pal told The Telegraph.