VEMULAWADA: The High Court on Thursday adjourned the case pertaining to the German citizenship of Vemulawada MLA Chennamneni Ramesh Babu after hearing arguments from both sides.
It may be recalled that in 2009, Congress leader Adi Srinivas, who contested against Ramesh Babu had lodged a case challenging the Indian citizenship of the TRS leader and complained to the Union home ministry.
Srinivas alleged that Babu had procured Indian citizenship after producing fake documents so as to contest the Assembly elections from Vemulawada. Babu married a German woman and got German citizenship, but, hiding that, he contested the elections after fraudulently getting Indian citizenship and won.
The home ministry on November 22 last year, issued orders cancelling the citizenship of Babu for concealing facts pertaining to his visits to India during the 12-month period. Challenging the decision, Babu filed a petition in the High Court seeking to set aside the orders of the ministry and also appealed for suspension of proceedings.
After hearing the arguments, High Court Justice Challa Kondandaram ordered the petitioner to produce evidence of dual citizenship of Babu and granted a four-week interim suspension and posted the case to December 16.
However, the home ministry has failed to submit the affidavit with proper evidence and documents regarding dual citizenship issue of Babu from German authorities.
The High Court took a serious view on the submission of old documents in the form of memos even after it issued notices for a detailed affidavit with full information from Germany. It ordered the home ministry to submit an affidavit before January 20 for the next hearing. After the ministry submitted an affidavit confirming that the MLA has German citizenship, the court took up the case for hearing on Thursday.
The petitioner’s advocate Ravi Kiran appealed to the bench to take a serious note of how a person with German citizenship was in the Assembly for a period of ten years.
After hearing the arguments, Justice Challa Kondaram informed the petitioner that as the roster system was changed, the case will be dealt by the concerned bench of the court and asked the registry to keep the case in front of the concerned bench as early as possible.
