Vijayawada: The manner in which Telangana state was carved out after bifurcating Andhra Pradesh, criticised even by Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently, will come under the scrutiny of the Supreme Court.
Chief Justice of India N. V. Ramana on Friday agreed to hear a petition filed by former Congress MP Vundavilli Arun Kumar on the legal validity of the AP Reorganisation Act 2014 that created the two states.
The Congress leader rushed to the apex court immediately after the bifurcation eight years ago challenging the decision. He, however, altered his prayer and sought directions to the Centre to come up with guidelines on going about bifurcation and formation of new states to avoid the injustice meted out to the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh.
Senior advocate Prashant Bhusan raised the issue of the pending petition filed by the former MP before the bench headed by the CJI, who agreed to take up a hearing on it. Accordingly, the court directed the registry to list the case for hearing in the next week.
The MP filed two urgent petitions in the apex court soon after the bifurcation of the state in 2014 complaining about the legality of the Act and also the procedure adopted to bifurcate the erstwhile AP into residuary AP and the new state of Telangana.
His contended that though the Centre was claiming that the AP Reorganisation Act was made based on Article 3 of Constitution dealing with formation of new states, alteration of areas, boundaries or names of new states, no proper justification was given for the Act and bifurcating the state.
As the bifurcation Act is not being implemented even as several provisions have been incorporated to avoid any injustice by any means to the residuary state, by the Centre, he also sought direction to the Centre to implement such provisions in AP.
Aruna Kumar said “As it has been a long time since AP’s bifurcation and there are no chances of its reversal, I urged the apex court to issue direction to the Centre to frame modalities in case of future bifurcation of states to avoid the kind of lapses and the injustice meted out to the people of Andhra Pradesh.”
