Hyderabad: A petitioner withdrew his Public Interest Litigation that had sought a court-monitored investigation into alleged gross misappropriation of state funds by AP Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu.
The petitioner, former junior civil judge J. Sravan Kumar of Vijayawada, withdrew the petition after the Hyderabad High Court pointed out that he had failed to show proof of his allegations.
A division bench comprising Chief Justice Thottathil B. Radhakrishnan and V. Ramasubramanian while dealing with the PIL by Mr Kumar, an advocate, made it clear that it would intervene in the matter only when he showed proof of his allegations.
The petitioner had questioned the AP Chief Minister, IT minister Nara Lokesh, former minister Palle Raghunath Reddy and Mr Ravi Kumar Vemuri, CEO of AP Non Residential Telugu Society (APNRT), for allocating thousands of acres of land to alleged shell and sleeping IT and other industries with the ulterior motive of committing quid pro quo and earning Rs 25,000 crore for their personal gain. When the bench asked Mr Kumar to show the list of shell companies, he replied that there was no information available on the official website. Off the record, officials had said that 75 per cent of the companies were shell companies that were established abroad.
Reacting to this, the bench said the court required recorded proof and would not react to off-the-record information.
Mr Kumar told the court that the government did not provide the information though he had applied for it under the Right to Information Act (RTI).
While observing that the RTI was often used as a tool for publicity, the bench told Mr Kumar that he had the right under the RTI Act to make an appeal if the government refused to disclose information.
Stating that the Registrar of Companies and the Reserve Bank of India would have the information regarding the companies, the bench stated that the Centre had recently announced that it had shut down about 1.23 lakh shell companies.
Chief Justice Radhakrishnan and Justice Ramasubramanian said that if the petitioner inquired into the list of shell companies which were shut, he would have a chance to find out the companies he had cited in his petition.
