Hyderabad: The Hyderabad High Court on Tuesday issued notices to ministers C. Adinarayana Reddy, S. Krishna Ranga Rao, N. Amarnath Reddy and Bhuma Akhila Priya, asking them to file their versions on petitions questioning their appointment in the AP Cabinet.
A division bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Ramesh Ranganathan and Justice T. Rajani was dealing with four separate writ of quo warranto petitions by a Hyderabad-based reporter T. Siva Prasad Reddy, questioning the four ministers’ competence and asking them to justify their continuance as ministers when they had defected to the TD without resigning from the YSR Congress.
Anand Kumar Kapoor, counsel for the petitioner, contended that as per Para (2) of 10th Schedule of the Constitution, persons who have defected cannot continue as members of the Legislature. He said that the 10th Schedule prohibits persons who have defected from becoming ministers.
Despite this existing rule, the four respondents were appointed ministers.
While submitting that the act of the AP Chief Minister was in violation of Article 164 (1B) of the Constitution, Mr Kapoor said that though the Chief Minister had discretionary powers to recommend to the Governor persons of his choice for appointment, how could the Governor accept the recommendation when the nominees for the posts had indulged in an unconstitutional act.
When the bench was about to issue notices to the four ministers, the AP Chief Secretary and members of the YSR Congress, D. Ramesh, counsel for the AP government, told the court that the petitioner had also moved a petition in 2015 questioning the appointment of Talasani Srinivas Yadav as a minister in the TS government, when he had defected from the TD; this petition was pending adjudication.
When the bench said that it would tag the petitions to the pending case and hear all the cases together, counsel for the petitioner submitted that it would be difficult to reach a conclusion to these cases if they were tagged with the pending petition.
The bench told counsel to notify the court if there was a delay in listing the matters. The bench, while directing the Registry to club the earlier 2015 petition against Mr Srinivas Yadav with the four current petitions, granted four weeks to the respondents to file counter affidavits.
