E-Paper
Row over 3 Andhra capitals: As trial resumes, govt seeks judges’ recusal
A division bench of the high court, comprising chief justice Prashant Kumar Mishra and justices M Satyanaryana Murthy and D V S S Somayajulu, began the hearing of arguments in the case, which was postponed several times for various reasons, including the Covid-19 pandemic and transfer of the chief justices and judges.
The Andhra Pradesh high court on Monday started fresh proceedings into the case against the proposed formation of three capitals for the state by the YS Jagan Mohan Reddy government, which was challenged by the farmers of Amaravati, the present capital region.
A division bench of the high court, comprising chief justice Prashant Kumar Mishra and justices M Satyanaryana Murthy and D V S S Somayajulu, began the hearing of arguments in the case, which was postponed several times for various reasons, including the Covid-19 pandemic and transfer of the chief justices and judges.
In June 2020, the Jagan Mohan Reddy government enacted two separate laws, the Andhra Pradesh Capital Region Development (Repeal) Act aimed at abolishing the authority created by the previous TDP government in 2015 to develop Amaravati as the state capital and the AP Decentralisation and Inclusive Development of All Regions Act aimed at establishing three capitals for the state – executive capital at Visakhapatnam, judicial capital at Kurnool and legislative capital at Amaravati.
Thousands of farmers, who gave up over 34,000 acres of fertile land for setting up the state capital in Amaravati, challenged the two laws in the high court. More than 100 petitions were filed by the farmers in this regard.
Arguing on behalf of Amaravati Parirakshana Samithi (Amaravati protection committee), senior Supreme Court advocate Shyam Divan argued that the governance was a continuous process and the change of governments did not mean a reversal of all the decisions taken by the previous regime.
He said thousands of Amaravati farmers had given away their arable lands for the construction of the capital city of Andhra Pradesh under a land pooling scheme. Now, there were no sustainable means of livelihood for them, as they had lost the value of their plots given to them in place of the lands they had surrendered for the capital city due to the abrupt halting of development in the region.
Appearing for the state government, senior advocate Dushyant Dave requested that two judges of the bench – justice Satyanarayana Murthy and justice Somayajulu – be recused of the hearing of the case, as there were allegations that both the judges had been allotted plots in Amaravati.
The chief justice, however, rejected the plea stating that an earlier division bench had turned down the request but it was not challenged then. He, however, said he would examine the plea for recusal of the two judges at the time of giving the final judgment.
Stating that there was a lot of significance to the hearing on the capital city issues, the chief justice observed that because of this case, the entire development in the state had come to a standstill. He assured that the hearing of the arguments would be completed at the earliest.
The hearing of the petitions was first taken up in November last year by a division bench headed by former chief justice J K Maheshwari. The hearings ended abruptly with the transfer of Justice Maheshwari to Sikkim in March this year.
His incumbent chief justice A K Goswami took up the hearing afresh in May but deferred it due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In August, the bench began the hearing but postponed it to November 15, on the petitioners’ plea. In the meantime, Justice Goswami was also transferred and replaced by Justice Mishra.
