The Telangana government on Wednesday filed a writ petition in the Hyderabad High Court, appealing against a single judge order which had set aside expulsion of two Congress MLAs from the Telangana Legislative Assembly.
A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Thottathil B. Radhakrishnan and Justice V. Ramasubramanian heard the petition.
The single judge order was passed more than three months ago.
The order of the single judge said it automatically restored and revived the membership of Komatireddy Venkat Reddy and S.A. Sampath Kumar of Telangana State Assembly. They must be continued as MLAs for their remaining tenure, the order dated April 17, 2018 said.
Appeal filed
The appeal was filed by Legislature Secretary V. Narasimha Charyulu and Law Secretary V. Niranjan Rao represented by Bharadwaj Associates and Additional Advocate General J. Ramchandra Rao respectively.
Hearing the appeal, Justice V. Ramasubramanian asked the counsel if they believed that the court had jurisdiction over the matter since earlier it was argued while hearing expulsion related petition that the court cannot intervene in the matter.
The Legislature Secretary in his affidavit stated that in the beginning he felt that he was not the aggrieved party and hence believed he need not file a writ appeal. But the single judge had expressed certain views in the contempt petition filed by the two MLAs implying that the judge expected the Legislature Secretary to enforce his order.
The view taken by the judge was not correct, he stated in the affidavit.
Delay in appeal
The Bench sought to know why there was delay in filing the appeal. The lawyers said they had filed petitions condoning the delay. Opposing condoning the delay in filing the appeal against the single judge order, the counsel for the two MLAs Jandhyala Ravi Shankar presented to the Bench that their grounds were casual.
The Bench directed him to file counter over condoning the delay and posted the matter to August 16.