Committee to look into Secunderabad cantonments incorporation into GHMC: Ajay Bhatt

Hyderabad: Minister of state for defence Ajay Bhatt said in the Lok Sabha on Friday that a committee had been constituted to look into the modalities of the proposed excision of civil areas of Secunderabad Cantonment. Bhatt said any decision regarding the excision of civil areas of the cantonment and their merger with the adjoining municipality shall be taken after consultation with all stakeholders.

He was replying to a question by Congress Malkajgiri MP A. Revanth Reddy, who is also the TPCC president, on the reason for not including public representatives, the MP and MLAs, in the eight-member committee set up to look into the merger of civil areas of the Secunderabad Cantonment Board (SCB) with the the GHMC.

The minister also stated that the Sumit Bose Committee had reported that cantonments had often not witnessed the benefits of urbanisation to the extent of neighbouring city areas. The committee recognised the need for the development of these areas as a major instrument for their growth and economic well-being so that they grew in sync with the adjoining municipalities in housing, resource development and smart municipal solutions.

The minister said the government had taken several steps to increase the speed of development in the cantonment areas including the Secunderabad cantonment. The 15th Finance Commission grants funds to the cantonment boards, grants for the creation of capital assets, revision of building bye-laws, implementation of Centrally sponsored schemes and preparation of land use plan under the Cantonments Act,

3,642 cases in HC dating back to the 70s

In a separate question, Revanth Reddy asked whether or not a number of cases including civil and criminal are pending in Supreme Court, High Court, and Lower Courts with some dating back to 1970s.

Law minister Kiren Rijiju replied that as per data retrieved from the Integrated Case Management Information System (ICMIS), there are no pending cases in the Supreme Court of India for more than 42 years. In the case of the High Courts and the district and subordinate courts, there were 3,642 and 2,979 pending cases respectively, dating back to the period 1970-79 as per the data available on the National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG) on February 1, 2023.

It is stated that the pendency of cases in the various courts had increased in the last three years according to a detailed statement provided by the Supreme Court.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, hearing cases was done through video conferencing mode. The Supreme Court had 3,79,954 hearings through video conferencing since the lockdown up to December 24, 2022. In furtherance of reducing pendency, it was directed to list 10 transfer petitions and 10 bail matters before each court on all five days of the week.