Move to shift Andhra Pradesh High Court to temporary location faces objections galore

A proposed move by the Andhra Pradesh government to expedite the setting up of a High Court at a temporary location in or around the state’s de facto capital Amravati by June this year, has not gone down too well with stakeholders.

The Andhra Pradesh government had written to Acting Chief Justice of the High Court of Judicature at Hyderabad Ramesh Ranganathan, asking him to constitute a committee to assess the suitability of a few buildings near Amravati to temporarily house what will be India’s youngest High Court.

The letter handed over by Andhra Pradesh Advocate General Dammalapati Srinivas to the ACJ on the December 30 last year, makes it clear that it is the government’s desire that the High Court functions out of one of the aforementioned buildings mentioned by June 2, 2018.

Andhra Pradesh Advocates Association President Challa Dhanamjaya said that a hasty decision to shift the High Court is fraught with practical difficulties both for the Bar, as well as for High Court staff.

“Moving to a temporary location will mean that lawyers will have to establish offices, residential establishments, and cater to the educational needs of their children, all of which are expensive exercises. This exercise is eventually inevitable, but to do so only to have to relocate in a short period is unreasonable and unnecessary.”

He said that the Association had made a representation to the Acting Chief Justice requesting that the Association and other stakeholders be given representation in the committee which is to look into the feasibility of establishing the High Court at a temporary location.

Highly placed sources at the Telangana and Andhra Pradesh High Court said that the Full Court had discussed the representation, but decided that the said parties would be consulted only after the committee of judges submits a report of its findings to the AP Government.

Dhanamjaya added that the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014, never contemplated the establishment of a temporary High Court. He also questioned the need to hasten the process, given that Hyderabad would be the joint capital of the two states until 2024, as envisioned under the Act.

“Let the Government take their time set a deadline to build a permanent structure and then move there. No one will have any objection to that,” said Dhanamjaya.

While the AP Bar is concerned with the practicality of a temporary shift, there are other quarters that object to the Court being established at Amaravati, temporarily or otherwise. Their argument essentially boils down to the equitable distribution of the organs of the state between the two distinct geographical regions – coastal Andhra Pradesh and Rayalaseema.

Y Jayaraju, President of the SC/ST Lawyers Forum for Social Justice said that concentrating all development in one area of the residual state would amount to the repetition of the same mistake that AP Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu had admitted to have made with regard to Hyderabad.

He added that Rayalaseema, which was relatively backward, would benefit from having the High Court operate out of the city of Kurnool, which was the first capital of the state of Andhra Pradesh.

He also alluded to a gentleman’s agreement that had been arrived at by “elders” during the formation of the state, which contemplated an equitable distribution of resources, investment, industries, governmental organizations and institutions between the two regions of the state.

“When Kurnool was the capital of the state, the High Court was located at Guntur in coastal Andhra. This was prior to the Telugu speaking regions of Hyderabad state being integrated into Andhra Pradesh. We are asking that a similar model be implemented,” said Raju.

He also pointed out that the availability of government land, its proximity to Hyderabad, and the vulnerability of Amaravati to extreme weather, made Kurnool an ideal choice.

While the government seems to be anxious to move the fledgling state’s High Court to a temporary location, the members of the Bar do not seem to think that it will be a good idea. According to stakeholders, the proposed date for shifting to the permanent seat of June 2, seems optimistic, to say the least.