HYDERABAD: Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan on Thursday appointed Justice C.V. Ramulu and Justice G. Chandraiah, former ju-dges of the then Hydera-bad High Court, as the Lokayukta and the chairman of the State Human Rights Commission respectively.
Former law secretary V. Niranjan Rao will be the Upa Lokayukta, while N. Anand Rao and Moham-med Irfan Moinuddin will be members of the SHRC. This is the first time that the government has constituted the Lokayu-kta and Human Rights Commission since the state was formed in 2014. In fact, the two institutions came about as the Telangana High Court had set a deadline for making these appointments.
Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao on Thursday held a meeting with Assembly Speaker Pocharam Srinivas Red-dy, Legislative Council chairman Gutha Sukhen-der Reddy, home minister Mohammed Mahmood Ali, and MIM senior MLA and MLC Ahmad Pasha Quadri and Syed Ameen Hasan Jaffri, before taking the decision to appoint the former judges to head the two institutions.
According to the Chief Minister’s Office, post this meeting, the state government forwarded the file relating to appointment of Justices Ramulu and Chandraiah to the Governor.
Significantly, the state government was expected to invite leaders of the opposition in the Assem-bly and Council before finalising the appointments of Lokayukta and Human Rights Commis-sion. But, as the Congress lost the Leader of the Opposition status in both the houses, the state government invited members of the MIM, which has seven MLAs in the Assembly.
It may be recalled that the state government on December 13 issued the ordinance amending the Telangana Lokayukta Act 1983 and Protection of HR Act 1993 to deal with non-availability of retired chief justices and appointing retired judges of the High Court to head both the institutions.
Justice Ramulu, native of Achanapalli village of Bodhan Town in Nizama-bad district, passed LLB in 1978 with distinction from the Marathwada University, Aurangabad. He was sworn in as Additional Judge of the High Court of Andhra Pradesh on December 2, 2002.
Justice Chandraiah ret-ired as judge of High Court on April 29, 2016. He was elevated to the post of judge from the bar and continued to be a judge for more than 12 years. Born in an agriculture family in Timmapur village of Adilabad district on May 10, 1954, he completed LLB, MA (Political Science) and LLM from Osmania University. He enrolled as an advocate of AP on November 6, 1980. He was elevated as Additional Judge of the AP High Court on May 26, 2005, and became a permanent judge on February 20, 2006.
