HYDERABAD: Opining that the contents of a writ petition involved public interest, a division bench of the High Court on Monday directed the registry to convert the said petition into a PIL case and place it before an appropriate bench.
The petitioner questioned the failure of income tax officials to take acting against six IAS officers of Andhra Pradesh _ K Ratna Prabha, Manmohan Singh, Adityanath Das, SV Prasad, B Sam Bob and M Samuel _ who allegedly failed to follow the procedure for utilising the public funds paid towards their legal expenses for defending their actions in CBI cases before the Supreme Court.
The bench, comprising Justice V Ramasubramanian and Justice J Uma Devi, was dealing with a petition filed by AV Ramana, a resident of the city, who submitted that the AP government had released ` 45 lakh towards fee for the advocates to defend in the apex court the actions of the six IAS officers.
The officers were given ` 7.56 lakh each by the AP state government vide GO Rt No 719 dated February 19, 2014.
Petitioner’s counsel Penjuri Venugopal pointed out that the IAS officers had to obtain stamped receipts from the advocates concerned for the fee and should furnish the same to the state.
Though it was not done, tax authorities remained silent despite representations to them to act in the matter, he told the court.
The bench felt that the petition had elements of public interest in it and directed the registry to post it before an appropriate bench.
Earlier, advocate Ponnavolu Sudhakar Reddy approached the Supreme Court questioning the alleged selective approach of the CBI in arraying ministers and IAS officers as accused in YS Jaganmohan Reddy’s disproportionate assets case.
The case before Supreme Court was dismissed. It was in this case that the state paid the money towards advocate fee.