The High Court on Tuesday directed the principal secretary, revenue to inform the court about the action the government would take against M Jagannadham, joint collector of Ranga Reddy district, for handling the case pertaining to 22 acre of prime land in Kapra in Hyderabad. “All is not well with the Ranga Reddy district collectorate,’’ it remarked.
Justice Ramesh Ranganathan was dealing with a writ petition filed by Mustafa Begum and others.
The petitioners contended that they are Inamdars for the land and when it came to their notice that some persons were given Occupancy Rights Certificate (ORC) for this land without their notice, they filed an appeal before the joint collector-I of Ranga Reddy district collectorate.
They said that the officer had passed orders on January 19 granting status quo till February 23 but later corrections were made to the order and the hearing date was advanced to February 2 abruptly and their advocate was kept in dark.
A notice was displayed on Feb 2 (Saturday) in the office of the joint collector that hearing in all the cases has been adjourned and the counsel will be informed later about the next date of hearing in due course.
The petitioners complained that Jagannadham passed orders on February 4 (Monday) vacating the status quo orders.
The present writ petition was filed challenging the action of the joint collector. The case came up for hearing last week, and when the judge perused all the orders and the interpolations etc., he directed the officer to be present on Tuesday.
Following the direction, the officer came to court on Tuesday and tried to substantiate his action when the judge asked him to explain how such orders were passed behind the back of the appellants or their counsel.
Justice Ramesh Ranganathan expressed deep anguish at the state of affairs in the district collectorate and wanted action to be taken. He asked the principal secretary to report in a week’ time about the proposed action.