Daily court hearings on Andhra Pradesh capital controversy

VIJAYAWADA: The Andhra Pradesh High Court will conduct daily hearings from Tuesday on about 90 petitions challenging the State government’s decision to have three capitals — Executive capital in Visakhapatnam, Judicial in Kurnool and Legislative in Amaravati. A three-member division bench comprising Chief Justice JK Maheshwari, Justice Rakesh Kumar and Justice M Satyanarayana Murthy announced this on Monday while hearing a batch of petitions filed against the AP Decentralisation Act and the AP CRDA (Repeal) Act.

The bench said it will first start hearing supplementary petitions through videoconference from Tuesday, and later take up the main petitions in person following physical distancing norms at the court. Presenting his arguments, the petitioners’ counsel Nidesh Gupta claimed the government is constructing a massive guest house on 30 acres in Visakhapatnam with the intention of shifting the capital to that city. He added that the government is building small guest houses in Tirupati and Kakinada. Gupta accused the government of not answering several queries on this matter in its affidavit.

“We will file a reply to the counter affidavit of the government,” he told the Bench. Appearing for the State government, Advocate General S Sriram clarified that there was no connection between shifting the capital and construction of the guest house in Vizag, and found fault with the petitioner for not specifying his objections to the construction of guest houses in Tirupati, Kakinada, and Vizag.

He also questioned the petitioner for mentioning in his arguments that the Rashtrapati Bhavan has 340 rooms, but not including the same in his writ petition. He found fault with bringing up issues that are not part of the petition. The AG informed the court that they have no objection to the request of the petitioner for getting information from the Accountant General on the expenditure incurred by the State government on the capital city construction.

HC bench says it will hear capital issues first 

The division bench reminded the AG of its stay order on the construction of the guest house. It explained that there are 229 petitions related to the capital city controversy, and as it is not possible to physically hear all the petitions, those not directly related to the capital city will be detached from this bunch.Advocate General Sriram asked the court to first hear the petitions pertaining to house sites in Amaravati. He also pointed out that there are petitions on house sites that have nothing to do with the capital and requested that they be removed from the list of Capital petitions.

He recalled that the state government had moved the Supreme Court challenging the High Court order on house sites. The apex court had advised the High Court to dispose of the cases pertaining to the house sites at the earliest, he reminded the bench. However, the bench asserted that it will hear only the capital issues first.