HC asks government to drop demolition of Telangana Secretariat

The High Court on Tuesday asked the State government not to go ahead with demolition of the Secretariat, which the government is proposing to demolish to construct a new one, till the government explains to it the reason and justification in taking a decision to demolish the existing Secretariat buildings. The government is asked to file a counter affidavit in 10 days.

While Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, who said the Secretariat is not in compliance of vaastu all these days, the state government on Tuesday told the court that the Secretariat is being demolished as it does not comply to fire safety standards.

A division bench of the Hyderabad High Court directed the Telangana government to file the counter affidavit on the PIL cases challenging the action of the government to shift offices of the state Secretariat to other buildings and to demolish the existing structures in



the Secretariat complex.

The bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Ramesh Ranganathan and Justice A Shankar Narayana was dealing with PILs filed by Congress MLA T Jeevan Reddy, advocate T Rajnikanth Reddy and the Forum for Good Governance, an NGO represented by its secretary M Padmanabha Reddy seeking to grant stay on shifting the offices of Telangana Secretariat to other buildings and demolition of the existing structures and to construct new buildings in its place.

Senior counsel S Satyam Reddy, appearing for Jeevan Reddy, said the state government decided to raze the existing buildings in Secretariat merely on the apprehension that the buildings are not viable as per Vastu. In fact, most of the buildings were constructed after 1986 and are very strong, and is located on a sprawling two lakh square feet area. Public money cannot be wasted for the said purpose, he said.