Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court summoned the roads and buildings (R&B) engineer-in-chief B Ganapathi Reddy to be present in court on Friday to explain how much land was required to construct the proposed legislative building complex at Errum Manzil.
The division bench of Chief Justice Raghavendra Singh Chauhan and Justice Shameem Akther called the officer after the government submitted that the Cabinet had taken a decision to construct the new legislature building on the recommendation of an experts committee of the R&B department.
The court also directed the state government to submit the agenda of the Cabinet meeting held on June 18 at Pragathi Bhavan, which has decided to construct the new Assembly building.
The court was dealing with PILs challenging the impending demolition of Errum Manzil in order to construct the new legislature complex.
The bench asked additional advocate-general J Ramachandra Rao whether the R&B department had told the government to vacate the Assembly building and what concrete steps the government had taken to renovate the building.
This came after the law officer stated that the report of the R&B in 2017 had conveyed that the Assembly building was unsafe. Based on this report, the state Cabinet had decided to construct a new building.
Justice Chauhan raised the point that the 2017 R&B report neither recommended the demolition of the Assembly building nor the shifting of the Assembly.
He asked why the decision had been taken to shift the Assembly without consulting experts and said that the High Court building was also 100 years old and some of the arches have to be replaced. The administration wing of the court had approached experts to replace them.
To the court’s observations, the AAG said that it was the wisdom of the Cabinet. Justice Chauhan then directed him to submit the agenda of the Cabinet meeting.
The court expressed dismay that the government had not submitted the plan for the new building and was not revealing how much land it required.
The CJ wondered how the government could construct a building without a plan, layout and data on how much space it required.
The CJ said, "When we plan to build a house on 300 square yards, we will have a plan or we approach the architect or civil engineer to get a plan to construct the house in the available space."
The AAG submitted that the plan was under preparation and three architect consultants would submit their plan.
Justice Chauhan appeared surprised and asked how the architects could give a plan without knowing the space required to house the legislative complex or how much land it required. He asked whether the state government was asking for competitive designs. Justice Chauhan has called the R&B engineer tomorrow to find out how much land will be required.
