Hyderabad High Court's interim order on BRS to remain in force

Hyderabad: The Hyderabad High Court on Thursday made it clear that the interim order granted with regard to Building Regularisation Scheme would remain in force till further orders.

Earlier, the bench had ordered the Telangana State government and the GHMC not to finalise regularisation of illegal constructions, but permitted receiving of applications for the scheme. A bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Dilip B. Bhosale and Justice P. Naveen Rao was dealing with a petition by Forum for Good Governance, represented by M. Padmanabha Reddy, challenging GO Ms No. 146 issued on October 31, 2015 amending Section 455–AA of the GHMC Act, 1955, and GO Ms No. 152 issued on November 2, 2015 to regularise illegal constructions in GHMC limits.

When the petition came up for hearing, Mahender Reddy, special counsel appearing for advocate-general of TS, urged the court to grant time to file a counter-affidavit explaining the stand of the government and also the relevance of GO Ms No. 152. The bench had on Wednesday asked counsel appearing for the TS government to find out and inform it by Thursday whether it would withdraw GO Ms No. 152 in view of issuance of Ordinance withdrawing GO Ms No. 146 issued.

As Mr Mahender Reddy sought time for filing the counter, the bench questioned Sivaraju Srinivas, counsel for the petitioner, about his stand on the case. Adjourning the case for four weeks, the bench ordered petitions impleading the HMWS&SB and TS Transco as respondents to the petition.

Cops told to hand over Bodies of maoists to kin
The Hyderabad High Court on Thursday directed the police authorities to hand over bodies of the eight Maoists killed in an encounter in the forests of Bijapur district in Chhattisgarh state on March 1, 2016 to their family members after taking due acknowledgement. The cops were also told to videograph the process of handing over of the bodies. A division bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Dilip B. Bhosale and Justice P. Naveen Rao was dealing with a petition by Professor G. Laxman, president of civil liberties committee seeking to declare the killing of the Maoists, including three women, by paramilitary forces during a combing operation as illegal and in violation of Article 14 and 21 of the Constitution.

Counsel for the petitioner V. Raghunath told the court that the bodies were kept in Bhadrachalam government hospital where the facilities available were inadequate to preserve them for long. He sought shifting of the bodies to the Osmania General Hospital in Hyderabad. TS additional advocate-general J. Ramachandra Rao said that there was no need to shift the bodies as the police has already made arrangements to preserve them. Postmortems were conducted as per the guidelines of the NHRC, he said.