Heritage building razed before Hyderabad High Court ordered stay: Telangana

Hyderabad: The TS government on Monday informed the Hyderabad High Court that IAS Officers Association Building at Greenlands of Begumpet in Hyderabad was demolished to a large extent, prior to the intervention of the court in the case.

K. Ramakrishna Reddy, advocate-general of TS, while informing this to a division bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Dilip B. Bhosale and Justice S.V. Bhatt, placed the photographs showing that a major portion of the building, expect certain walls, was razed.

It may be recalled that the court had on Friday ordered the government to maintain status quo and submit the status report to the court on Monday. The court was dealing with a PIL by Forum for a Better Hyderabad represented by its secretary O.M. Debara challenging the demolition of the notified heritage building.

The bench was disinclined to take the photographs produced by counsel for the petitioner carried by certain newspapers in which only partial demolition of the building was shown.

Counsel for the petitioner urged the court to declare the demolition as illegal as the building was razed to the ground without it being denotified from the list of heritage properties.

When the AG requested for time to file a counter affidavit, the bench felt that the counter affidavit from government was needed for further adjudication and posted the case after three weeks.

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