VIJAYAWADA: The AP High Court on Tuesday adjourned hearing on the bail petition of former CM N Chandrababu Naidu in the Amaravati Inner Ring Road irregularities case to Wednesday.
Based on a complaint lodged by Mangalagiri MLA Alla Ramakrishna Reddy that irregularities had taken place in the designing of the Amaravati Master Plan and alignment of Inner Ring Road, APCID registered the case against Naidu on May 9, 2022. Subsequently, Naidu approached the High Court seeking bail.
When the case came up for hearing before Justice K Suresh Reddy, counsel for Naidu, senior advocate Sidharth Luthra said a series of cases were being registered against the TDP chief one after another with the sole intention of political vendetta. He said policy decisions of the previous regime are being projected as criminal actions by the present government. “Construction of Amaravati Inner Ring Road has not happened and not a single acre has been acquired for the project and not a single rupee was spent on it. Under such circumstances, there is no scope for making changes in the alignment to benefit others,” he argued.
He further pointed out that Heritage is a listed company and lakhs of people are its shareholders. It purchased land for the expansion of business. The land is located 4 to 9 km from the proposed inner ring road. He also dismissed the allegations of quid pro quo in Lingamaneni Ramesh giving his guest house to Naidu. He argued that the petitioner has been staying in the house since July 2017 and in June 2019, paid Rs 27 lakh as rent. Lingamaneni Group not showing the income from the rent in its IT returns, is that group’s internal matter, he contended.
Advocate General S Sriram said there is no truth in the argument that cases were registered out of political vendetta. He argued that the petitioner, who is in judicial custody in another case, cannot be deemed to be in jail in the present case. Hence, the bail petition in the case is not maintainable. Later, the hearing in the case was adjourned to Wednesday.