Hyderabad: The judgment prohibiting the construction of the new legislature complex by demolishing Errum Manzil is not the first time state government has been hauled up by the courts.
The TRS government suffered a setback with adverse orders with regard to compassionate appointments in the Singareni Collieries and appointments of parliamentary secretaries.
During his first term, Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao appointed six MLAs as parliamentary secretaries, but the appointments were struck down by the High Court.
A proposal of the state government to de-water the Hussainsagar also faced legal hurdles and did not materialise.
The High Court also struck down the government’s Voluntary Retirement Scheme on Health Reasons, introduced by Singareni Collieries Company Ltd (SCCL) to fill hundreds of posts with the wards of its existing employees, in 2017. The TRS had a hard time in the December 2018 Assembly elections in the coal belt and lost the Karimnagar and Adilabad Lok Sabha seats in the 2019 parliament elections because of the backlash from this judgment.
When Komatireddy Venkat Reddy and S.A. Sampath Kumar challenged the suspension of their membership of the assembly during the first tenure of the TRS government, the legal tangle resulted in the resignation of the Advocate-General.
In its second term, the TRS government had to deal with a number of cases challenging the chief minister’s early calling of municipal elections.
With this latest judgment concerning the construction of the legislature complex by demolishing Errum Manzil, a heritage structure, legal circles are wondering if the chief minister will review the performance of his law officers in the High Court.
The Chief Minister is said to have asked law officers to examine the possibilities of appealing the High Court order before the Supreme Court. The chief minister may also review pending cases against crucial decisions of the government with regard to construction of the new secretariat and also municipal elections.
