Hyderabad: Stating that it will take all steps to protect the interests of investors and depositors in the Agri Gold Group of Companies so that they get their money back, the Hyderabad High Court on Monday directed the AP CID to submit the status of the probe into the case against the company by next Monday.
A division bench, comprising Acting Chief Justice Dilip B. Bhosale and Justice S.V. Bhatt was dealing with a plea by the Telangana Agri Gold Customers and Agents Welfare Association, represented by its president A. Ramesh Babu of the city, seeking a probe either with the CBI or ED into Agri Gold deposits scam.
Counsel appearing for the petitioners Shravan Kumar brought to the notice of the court that directors of the company have been selling properties which are on benami names and the CID probe into the case was also going on at snail’s pace.
Reacting to the submissions, the bench asked counsel for AP to ensure that the company does not sell its benami properties and also list the benami properties of the board of directors of the company.
Counsel appearing for the three-member committee headed by retired High Court judge constituted to oversee the auction of properties of the company said that the CI India Ltd, which has been entrusted with the job of auctioning the properties, has not yet submitted the list of properties and other documents to the committee.
Counsel appearing for the company said that due to holidays for Dasara and Diwali, the company was not able to secure the required documents.
Asking CI India to submit the documents to the committee, the bench adjourned the matter.
Prevention better than ex-gratia: HC
A division bench, comprising acting Chief Justice Dilip B. Bhosale and Justice S.V. Bhatt of the Hyderabad High Court, on Monday felt that preventive measures were more important than giving compensation to families of farmers after they had committed suicide.
The Bench was dealing with petitions by Vyvasaya Jana Chaitanya Samiti and Telangana Vidhyavanthula Vedika represented by its honorary president M. Kodandaram, and L. Jalapathi Rao of the Telangana Rythu Joint Action Committee, seeking to direct the TS and AP governments to take visionary steps to prevent farmers’ suicides and to invite applications from farmers who were in deep financial trouble and take remedial measures.
Advocate-general of AP P. Venugopal submitted that the AP state government had been taking steps to rescue distressed farmers by providing welfare schemes and also by giving compensations to the victims’ families.
The Bench asked the AG whether it had any mechanism to check if the welfare schemes had been reaching the framers or not.
When the AG replied in the positive, the Bench stated that ideally no farmer should commit suicide and both the governments should take up massive awareness campaigns to educate farmers not to take their lives.
B. Rachana Reddy, appearing for Telangana Vidhyavanthula Vedika, submitted that drying up of crops and delays in loan waiver were leading to the suicides. She said that every day at least four to five farmers took their lives in TS.
She added that AP had already declared the drought-hit mandals but the TS government had not yet declared the list of drought-hit mandals in the state. Once the government notified the list of drought-hit mandals, the farmers would be able to get financial assistance from the Centre-sponsored welfare schemes.
S. Sharath Kumar, special counsel for TS, opposed the contentions of the petitioners and said that the allegations of the petitioners were baseless and urged the court to give time to file a counter affidavit. The Bench adjourned the case to November 23.
PIL on number plates withdrawn
The Hyderabad High Court on Monday allowed J. Ram Mohan Chowdhary of the city to withdraw his PIL and file a writ petition afresh, challenging GO Ms No. 44 issued on October 15, 2015 by the TS government for re-assignment of vehicle registration number by substituting letters ‘AP’ with ‘TS’.
When the PIL has come up for hearing, a bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Dilip B. Bhosale and Justice S.V. Bhatt, after perusing the affidavit, observed that the petition was not maintainable and was not properly drafted.
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