Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court discharged AP cadre senior IAS officer Y. Srilakshmi in a case of alleged involvement in granting of mining lease to Karnataka-based Gali Janardhan Reddy’s Obulapuram Mining Company (OMC) in violation of norms. The case was being heard for over a decade in the CBI court.
Justice Chillakur Sumalatha of the Telangana High Court made it clear that there were no grounds for framing of criminal conspiracy charges against Srilakshmi for granting the leases to OMC.
However, the CBI court is to verify whether any other provision of law covered her actions and frame charges as needed and continue with the trial proceedings.
The CBI had named Srilakshmi as Accused N. 6 and filed a chargesheet in 2012.The CBI filed a supplementary chargesheet in which several charges were levelled against Srilakshmi, who was then secretary, mining department of undivided AP, she had cleared the application of OMC for mining lease by rejecting the applications of other firms like Vinayaka Mining Company.
Srilakshmi filed a discharge petition before the CBI court to quash the cases against her. The CBI court on October 17, and she approached the High Court.
Justice Sumalatha went through the documents of notification issued for re-grant of lease, applications made by the OMC and other companies, mining department officials recommending the name of OMC to the AP Mineral Development Corporation for mining lease, recommendations to the forest department for clearances to OMC for mining, dates of rejecting of applications submitted by the other companies and others and discharged Srilakshmi.
