HYDERABAD: The Telangana High Court on Thursday refused to grant a stay on the issue of the Layout Regularisation Scheme (LRS) without hearing the State government's version.
Hearing a batch of PILs challenging GO 131 issued on August 31 for regularisation of unapproved and illegal layouts under the LRS-2020, a division bench issued notices to the Telangana Chief Secretary, Principal Secretaries of Municipal Administration and Panchayat Raj, and Commissioners of the HMDA and GHMC. It directed the authorities to respond to the petitioners’ contentions and posted the matter to November 12.
The bench, comprising Chief Justice Raghvendra Singh Chauhan and Justice B Vijaysen Reddy, was hearing PILs filed by the NGO Forum for Good Governance, Congress MP Komatireddy Venkat Reddy and advocate P Sreedhar Reddy, among others.
The bench said the petitioners apprehend that the government’s decision would motivate people to go for illegal layouts which would be regularised in certain areas, which are already prohibited. Hence, the GO is not sustainable, the petitioners have submitted.
The bench asked Advocate General BS Prasad by when the State can file its counter affidavit. The AG sought two weeks for this.Disputing the AG’s submission, senior advocate S Satyam Reddy, appearing for the NGO, urged the court to stay the implementation of the GO.
He said that in the garb of this GO, many are resorting to laying illegal layouts and people are facing financial constraints to pay the regularisation fee. During the course of the hearing, the bench pulled up the State government for its failure to take action against the erring persons responsible for illegal layouts.
"What are the government staff doing when such irregularities are taking place in the State? What action has been taken under GO 111? The present situation (of issuing GO 131) would not have arisen if the law was implemented effectively. The government's action itself appears to be violating the laws by implementing various LRS schemes every five years," the bench remarked.