E-Paper
‘No urgency’: SC to hear Andhra’s appeal against scrapping 3 capital plan in Dec
A Supreme Court bench comprising justices Sanjeev Khanna and Bela M Trivedi deferred the hearing on the SLP, saying the full-fledged hearing will take place in December
HYDERABAD: The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to take up urgently the special leave petition of the Jagan Mohan Reddy government in Andhra Pradesh challenging the state high court judgement of March 3, 2022, declaring Amaravati as the only capital of the state, people familiar with the matter said.
A Supreme Court bench comprising justices Sanjeev Khanna and Bela M Trivedi deferred the hearing on the SLP, which was clubbed with counter-petitions filed by the farmers of Amaravati, to December, saying it was not possible to take up the cases urgently, as there were important cases pertaining to Constitutional bench to be heard.
“We shall take up a full-fledged hearing on the capital issue in December. There is no urgency for the same,” the bench said, turning down the plea of former attorney general K K Venugopal, who argued on behalf of the state government, for an urgent hearing of the case.
Venugopal said he required just three hours to complete his arguments. The bench, however, asked whether he had served notices to all the respondents (Amaravati farmers). He told the court that except two farmers, who had died during the course of the litigation, notices were sent to all the other farmers.
The bench asked the state government’s counsel to submit the details of the notices to the court before the next hearing.
On March 3, 2022, a division bench of Andhra Pradesh high court headed by chief justice Prashant Kumar Mishra delivered a landmark judgement declaring that Amaravati was the only capital of Andhra Pradesh.
It said the state legislature had no competence to enact any legislation on three capitals for the state – executive capital at Visakhapatnam, judicial capital at Kurnool and legislative capital at Amaravati, as proposed by the Jagan Mohan Reddy government in November 2019.
The high court also directed that the state government complete within six months all the pending infrastructure works of the capital region in Amaravati which were halted in June 2019, soon after Jagan assumed charge as the chief minister.
Six months later, the state government on September 17, 2022, filed a special leave petition in the Supreme Court challenging the high court judgement. The first hearing of the petitions was held on November 28, 2022 where the apex court gave a stay on the HC’s directions to develop infrastructure in Amaravati within a stipulated time-frame.
The Supreme Court, however, did not stay the other part of the judgement, which declared Amaravati as the state capital and the law on three capitals was not valid.
Simultaneously, the farmers of Amaravati, under the banner of Amaravati Parirakshana Samithi also moved the Supreme Court, questioning the state government’s SLP. The case was first deferred to February 23, 2023 and later to March 28.
When the issue came up before the division bench of the Supreme Court comprising Justice K M Joseph and Justice B V Nagaratna on March 28, it did not entertain the state government’s petition to expedite the hearing.
The bench said it would hear the SLP along with other petitions linked to the issue on July 11. In the meantime, Justice Joseph retired on June 16 and the case was transferred to another bench, comprising Justice Sanjeev Khanna and Justice Bela Trivedi.
