Taking a strong exception to the prolonged agitation for a separate Telangana state during which normal life gets affected, courts become paralysed and colossal damage is done to public property, the Supreme Court has sought the Andhra Pradesh government’s response to a lawsuit that seeks a direction that a new state shouldn’t be carved out from the parent territory.
A bench of justices GS Singhvi and S Mukhopadhyaya on Friday also issued notice to separatist Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) and its anchor K Chandrasekhar Rao, an MP.
Judges also issued notices to the registrar general of the AP high court and the state bar council, and sought their replies on the PIL filed by lawyer PV Krishnaiah seeking the court’s direction to the Centre to restrain it from carving a new state.
Krishnaiah has urged the court to direct the state to ensure that the public isn’t inconvenienced on account of the year-long agitation.
He said apart from normal life being paralysed, courts, except the state high court, were also unable to function properly due to the agitation, as many government employees — including police personnel — joined the agitation.
The calls of “rasta roko” and “rail roko” given by TRS disrupted work at the public sector company Singareni Collieries Limited causing colossal loss of public money and power supply.
“Because of non-production of sufficient power, not only has the government imposed power cuts in the entire city (of Hyderabad), but also in other districts,” he told the court.
The court’s intervention assumes significance in view of its earlier directions in the Gujjar agitation case in 2009 that court should be empowered to impose penalty of imprisonment and a fine which is equivalent to the market value of the property damaged on the day of the incident on the perpetrators of the violent agitation.
