HYDERABAD: A division bench of the Hyderabad High Court on Tuesday issued notices to the AP special chief secretary to endowments, endowment commissioner, TTD executive officer and the Indus Ind Bank at Tirupati for filing counter affidavits in a PIL filed challenging the decision of depositing Rs 1,000 crore belonging to the TTD in the private bank.
The bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Ramesh Ranganathan and Justice K Vijaya Lakshmi was dealing with a PIL filed by P Naveen Kumar Reddy, resident of Chittoor, seeking directions to the State government for framing guidelines over depositing TTD funds in banks.
Petitioner’s counsel J Sridhar submitted that there was a need to frame guidelines for depositing TTD funds as per the Section 111 of the Endowments Act. In fact, the TTD never deposited its funds in a private bank. The TTD executive officer cannot act in an arbitrary manner by depositing TTD funds in a private bank. The funds have to be deposited only in the nationalised banks, he added.
Taking these submissions into consideration, the bench asked the counsel for TTD to tell why Indus Ind bank was selected for depositing the TTD fund. The bench issued notices to the respondent authorities for filing counter affidavits on the issue, and posted the matter after four weeks for further hearing.