AP High Court to hear plea on capital relocation on March 30

Vijayawada: The Andhra Pradesh High Court has postponed all matters relating to the state government’s decision to set up three capitals to March 30. The HC was hearing a batch of petitions on several issues related to the state government’s decision to relocate the Andhra Pradesh High Court and offices of the state vigilance commissioner to Kurnool, besides the repeal of the CRDA Act, decentralization of governance and others, the AP High Court scheduled them for hearing on March 30. A division bench of the High Court heard a batch of petitions on state’s move to relocate AP High Court to Kurnool from its present location at Amaravati and also on other issues on Wednesday.

Ambati Sudhakar and Ponneganti Mallikharjuna Rao, counsels for the petitioners, argued in the court that when the Telangana government appealed to the-then combined AP High Court for both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana states to be shifted to Gachibowli from its present location at Afzal Gunj  in Hyderabad, the court struck off the plea and issued an order stating that neither the government nor the legislature of Telangana had such a right to order the shift. At that point of time, the AP High Court observed that it would hear the case further and directed the state government not to stop ongoing works at the present High Court. The court, in a related matter, also asked for submission of reports of the G.N. Rao committee and the Boston Consulting Group on the development of state and the setting up three capitals.

Meanwhile, a lunch motion Public Interest Litigation (PIL) was moved in the AP High Court on Wednesday, listing a series of violations in allotment of lands assigned as house sites for the poor in parts of Krishna and Guntur districts of the capital region Amaravati. Avala Nanda Kishore, a farmer from Krishya-napalem village of the capital region, filed the PIL. Karumanchi Indraneel, the petitioner’s counsel, informed the HC division bench that the state government was violating CRDA zoning regulations and the Amaravati region master plan by allotting house sites to the poor in assigned lands in parts of Krishna and Guntur districts. Counsel Indraneel said that though the CRDA master plan held a promise to allot house sites with a minimum plot area of 120 square yards, the state government had issued GO 107 to allot only one cent of land (nearly 48 square yards), which violated the norm of maintaining minimum plot area while allocating house sites.

The counsel also informed the court that once assigned lands were allotted to beneficiaries, the latter could sell them only after 20 years as the then TD government had carried out an amendment to the 1977 act on AP Assigned Lands to that affect in 2019.