HYDERABAD: A division bench of Telangana High Court on Friday posted the three PILs filed in the year 2016 against the State government’s decision to demolish existing Secretariat buildings at Saifabad in the city and to construct new buildings in its place, to the last week of August 2019 for final hearing.
Another PIL which was filed by Congress MP A Revanth Reddy on June 27 on the same issue, was posted to July 8 as the senior counsel appearing for the petitioner was not present.
Three PILs filed by Congress MLA T Jeevan Reddy, advocate T Rajinikanth Reddy and the Forum for Good Governance, an NGO represented by its secretary M Padmanabha Reddy, sought the court to grant a stay of shifting the offices of Telangana Secretariat to other buildings and demolition of existing structures to construct new buildings in its place.
When these three PILs came up for hearing, the bench, comprising Chief Justice Raghvendra Singh Chauhan and Justice Shameem Akther, found that the matter was earlier heard in October 2017 and that the government has filed its counter affidavit on the issue.
The bench directed the petitioners’ counsels to confine their arguments on the aspect of judiciary’s role in adjudicating the issues where the governments have taken policy decisions.
Time and again the Supreme Court has said that the scope of judicial review regarding the governments’ policy decisions was limited, the bench observed and posted the matter to August for final hearing.