High Court orders status quo on Telangana Secretariat

The Telangana High Court on Wednesday directed the state government not to disturb the existing structure until the court issues further orders. 

Expressing its doubts about the architectural plan of the new construction for the Secretariat complex not being available yet and yet making arrangements to raze the existing building by shifting the offices to other places, the court said that it seems the government is in a mighty hurry to demolish the buildings.

While dealing with petitions challenging the impending demolition of the Secretariat buildings, the division bench of Chief Justice Raghvendra Singh Chauhan and Justice A. Abhishek Reddy on Wednesday observed: "Why the state government is in a hurry to demolish the existing Secretariat buildings when it has not taken final decision on structural plans, designs of the proposed new Secretariat complex?”

The bench was dealing with a batch of PILs filed separately in 2016 by Congress MLA T. Jeevan Reddy, advocate Tera Rajinikanth Reddy and the Forum for Good Governance, an NGO represented by its secretary M. Padmanabha Reddy. They sought grant of a stay on shifting the offices of the Telangana Secretariat to other buildings and demolition of existing structures to construct new buildings in its place. Congress MP A. Revanth Reddy and Prof.  P.L. Vishweshwar Rao, vice-president of Telangana Jana Samithi, also filed PILs challenging the impending demolition of the



Secretariat buildings.

Following earlier directions of the court, the state government had filed an additional counter-affidavit in the case and urged the court to permit it to proceed with construction of an integrated secretariat building after analysing different architectural plans which would be submitted by the architectural consultants.

The Additional Advocate General submitted that the area to be allotted to various departments will be finalised only after the cabinet approves the designs and final plans of the proposed new complex to be furnished by the architects. After perusing the contents of the additional affidavit, the bench wanted to know why the state government has shown such hurry in wanting to demolish the existing structures and laying the foundation stone for the new secretariat when no final decision has been made on the plan and design of the proposed complex. Therefore, the stay granted earlier not to demolish it will continue, the bench noted.

The bench said that yesterday, with computers, it does not take much time to design a building. “Without having architectural designs, plans, cost estimate, area to be allotted for each department and so on, the cabinet took the decision to demolish the existing structure, which is not reasonable. A decision has to be based on relevant facts,” the bench observed, and made it clear that the court stay will continue until further orders.