Cuttack: Even as two senior IAS officers of the state today tendered unconditional apology, the Orissa High Court did not grant any immediate relief to them and fixed January 10 to decide the fate of their alleged disobedience of the orders passed by the court.

State rural development secretary Surendra Nath Tripathy and women and child development secretary Arati Ahuja appeared personally before the bench of Chief Justice V Gopala Gowda and Justice B N Mohapatra as directed earlier this month.

Both the senior IAS officers tendered apology and pleaded before the HC to drop the charges of contempt of court initiated against them for non-compliance of orders with respect to providing drinking water facilities in all the anganwadi centres of the state.

While adjudicating over a PIL pertaining to supply of inferior quality of dal for the mid-day meal scheme in schools, the HC had taken note of unavailability of drinking water facilities in most of the 9000-odd anganwadi centres running in the state.

The HC in March this year had asked the state government to provide the facilities by June 30, 2011.

However, the government failed to meet the deadline despite repeated nudges to carry the work in a war-footing manner.

Following this, the petitioner Keonjhar Navanirman Samiti sought to initiate contempt proceedings against the concerned officials for "willful disobedience of HC order".

In response to a show cause notice, the two IAS officers had filed explanations in shape of affidavits in October this year which however, did not satisfy the court.

Upset with the callousness of the government, the HC on December 5 had observed that this was a fit case of cognisance of alleged disobedience and directed the two concerned officials to remain present in the court on December 14.

Although, the two officials on the day filed separate affidavits, the contents of the affidavits were incongruent, alleged the petitioner advocate and senior Congress leader Narasimha Mishra.

Mishra said while one secretary maintains that there are only 156 anganwadis now left without drinking water facility, the other secretary puts the figure at 233.