HYDERABAD: Considering the plea of the counsels for Telangana law secretary and Legislative Assembly secretary seeking some time for filing counter affidavits in the contempt case filed by Congress MLAs Komatireddy Venkat Reddy and SA Sampath Kumar, justice B Siva Sankara Rao of the High Court on Friday granted them two weeks’ time to file counter affidavits by July 27 with regard to the “expulsion” of both the Congress members from the state Assembly.
The judge was dealing with the contempt petition filed by Komatireddy and Sampath, who are under expulsion, against law department secretary V Niranjan Rao and Assembly secretary V Narasimhacharyulu for “deliberately” not implementing the order passed by the court in April this year.
When the matter came up for hearing on Friday, advocate Saikrishna, appearing for the Assembly secretary, told the court that a senior counsel would appear on behalf of Narasimhacharyulu and an affidavit was filed in that regard. He sought grant of some time for filing a counter affidavit. When additional advocate-general J Ramachandra Rao submitted that he was appearing for the law secretary and sought some time to file counter, the judge agreed to their plea and posted the matter to August 3 for hearing.
At this stage, advocate Jandhyala Ravi Shankar, appearing for Komatireddy and Sampath, pointed out that the Assembly secretary had failed to implement the court order by not restoring the Assembly membership of the two petitioners till date. In spite of the court orders, the petitioners’ names were not uploaded in the Assembly members list and the two were also not allowed inside the Assembly. Though the monsoon session of Assembly would commence shortly, the authorities were deliberately not implementing the court order, he added.
Making it clear that his earlier order was very clear, the judge said that he would have a detailed hearing of the contempt case and posted the matter to July 27.
Security cover to MLAs withdrawn
The security cover to Komatireddy Venkar Reddy and SA Sampath Kumar, the two expelled MLAs, was withdrawn pursuant to a notification issued by the state legislature secretariat duly declaring that they were expelled from the state legislature, police told the High Court on Friday.