Hyderabad: Expressing displeasure at the non-appearance of a private contractor who had undertaken the pipeline laying work from Mallepally to Nagarjunasagar in Nalgonda district despite a court order, the Hyderabad High Court on Monday directed the authorities to stay the work and directed them not to make any payments to the contractor.
A division bench comprising Chief Justice Thottathil B. Radhakrishnan and Justice A.V. Bhatt was dealing with a petition by advocate T. Rajinikanth Reddy. He had appealed against the inaction of the authorities in preventing the contractor from cutting down trees approximately 50 years old beside the roads that leads to Mallepally and to Nagarjunasagar near Rangareddy Gudem.
The felling of trees was for the alleged purpose of laying a pipeline without obtaining any permission from the competent authority. Earlier, when this case came up for hearing, the bench while pointing out that felling the trees in the name of development work and planting two saplings in place of one tree had become a farce, directed the contractor to appear before the court to explain whether he had taken steps to plant saplings as per the rules or not.
When counsel for the government told the court that 602 trees were removed to lay the pipeline and the contractor had to plant 1,202 saplings in their place, the bench questioned whether there would be any provisions in the law to penalise the contractor in case they failed to plant the saplings.
When this case came up for hearing on Monday, the government counsel told the court that they had informed the contractor to appear before the court or engage a counsel to represent him. But no one was present in the court.
The petitioner contended that it was mandatory to obtain permission to fell a tree under the AP Water Land and Trees Act 2002.
While granting the interim stay on pipeline work and payments to the contractor, the bench issued a notice to the contractor and adjourned the case for two weeks by directing that the contractor shall be present on the hearing day.
