More articles by

Lalita Iyer
Lalita Iyer

Telangana

Hyd HC asks Telangana govt to halt demolishing secretariat building

Chandrasekhar-Rao-k (File) K Chandrasekhar Rao

The Hyderabad High Court asked the Telangana government to stop demolishing the secretariat building to construct a new one until further notice.

The court order was in the wake of a petition filed by Congress MLA T Jeevan Reddy saying the construction of new building would burden the exchequer with crores of rupees. In his petition, the MLA said the plan to construct new building was due to Vastu reasons.

Advocate General K Ramakrishna Reddy, who appeared for the state government, claimed that the new building was planned for the sake of administrative convenience and not because of Vastu reasons.

He urged the bench to dismiss the petition, siting case in which the Madras High Court dismissed a similar PIL. He went on to argue that it was within the government’s power to decide on the place and structure to locate its offices.

A division bench, comprising Acting Chief Justice Ramesh Ranganathan and Justice A Shankar Narayan, observed that “If the decision to demolish all the buildings is based on Vastu, then the court can examine it. But if the decision is based upon fire safety norms or other administrative reasons, it has a very limited scope”.

Referring to the argument that every act of the government has to be reasonable, the bench said the test was whether the decision violated Article 14 of the Constitution.

Senior counsel S Satyam Reddy argued that most of the buildings constructed after 1986 continue to be strong, except the G Block. He added that demolishing such strong buildings in the name of Vastu was a waste of public money.

The Acting CJ remarked that personally he would give a serious thought before spending even a paisa of public money, but wondered what role judiciary could play in such cases.

Its interesting to note that K Chandrasekhar Rao has not stepped into the secretariat even once after taking over as chief minister. In fact, another entrance was constructed and several trees were cut down to build a separate road for the CM to come to the secretariat. Despite this, the chief minister refused to come to the secretariat.

The court has asked the government file its reasons for demolishing the building by November 10.

Meanwhile, the Andhra Pradesh government, which has been asked to vacate the secretariat premises, is unwilling to do so as they have the legal permission to stay at the building. The AP government has asked the Telangana government to find them an ideal plot to construct a building of their own.

This browser settings will not support to add bookmarks programmatically. Please press Ctrl+D or change settings to bookmark this page.
Topics : #Telangana

Related Reading