HYDERABAD: The Telangana High Court on Tuesday sought a response from the Telangana state government after a petition alleged that the state transport officials were allowing the plying of vehicles belonging to Diwakar Travels and some other agencies in the state “though these are designated ‘scrap’.” Diwakar Travels belongs to AP Telugu Desam leader J.C. Prabhakar Reddy.
Justice C.V. Bhaskar Reddy issued notices to the Telangana state government and its transport authorities, apart from Prabhakar Reddy and the CBI.
The judge was dealing with a petition filed by AP’s Tadipatri MLA Kethireddy Pedda Reddy of the YSRC, who sought a direction from the High Court for a CBI inquiry to find out why the Telangana state government was allowing scrap vehicles of Diwakar Travels to ply in the state.
Pedda Reddy submitted that Prabhakar Reddy, brother of former minister J.C. Diwakar Reddy, had purchased BS III vehicles as scrap and registered them as BS-IV vehicles by “forging and fabricating” the documents and was operating them in Telangana. BS refers to Bharat Standard with regard to the emission of vehicles.
The MLA also submitted before the court that Prabhakar Reddy's travels firm cannot run its vehicles in Telangana even assuming that they are BS IV-compliant
“In Andhra Pradesh, cases were registered against Prabhakar Reddy and an inquiry is going on. However, in Telangana, no action was taken against his traves firm yet and the authorities are allowing the vehicles to ply freely on the roads,” he added.
