HC dismisses plea on Telangana bill

HYDERABAD: The two-member PIL bench of the AP High Court dismissed at the admission stage a writ petition seeking a direction to the Central government not to introduce Telangana Bill in the parliament. The bench of chief justice Nisar Ahmad Kakru and justice Vilas Afzalpurkar were dealing with a plea in public interest filed by one JP Rao. The petitioner pleaded that the state of Andhra Pradesh was formed under the Constitution and therefore  bifurcation would be unconstitutional. The bench without dealing with the said argument pointed out that its jurisdiction do not extend to the proceedings of the Parliament as made out in the petition and as the petition was misconceived, it  was dismissed. Court Summons Warangal DFO in Contempt CaseJustice Naushad Ali of the AP High Court on Wednesday summoned DFO Warangal S. Ramesh to be present in court to purge himself of charges of contempt of court. The judge was dealing with a contempt case in which the owner of a lorry carrying sand in the district complained that despite directions for release of the lorry the erring forest official had not released the vehicle. The petitioner pointed out that the lorry was initially seized in February on the ground that it was transporting forest sand without a valid permit. The offence according to him was compounded on payment of a fine of Rs. 25,000 per lorry.  He complained that the High court had directed the release of the lorry on payment of the compounded amount. The DFO took the plea that the order compounding the offence was never communicated to the complainant. The judge then summoned the records and found that the statement was contrary to the records and the order was indeed communicated to the petitioner. When the listed matter was called on Wednesday, the judge noticed that the erring forest officer was neither present in court nor had filed his response. The judge, accordingly ordered the presence of the forest officer.