NEWS: Chief Justice of India, SA Bobde disqualified himself from hearing Andhra Government’s Plea against High Court order continuing Trifurcation of Capitals

By Legal Wires 6 Minutes Read

Chief Justice, SA Bobde on Tuesday recused himself from trial Andhra Pradesh Government’s plea against the temporary stay order passed by the High Court on the creation of three capital cities in the State.

As the Special Leave Petition went up for consideration before the Bench, which also encompassed of Justices AS Bopanna & V Ramasubramanian, senior advocate Ranjit Kumar indicated out that the Chief Justice’s daughter had acted for one of the parties in the course of proceedings before the High Court.

On discovering the same, Chief Justice SA Bobde speedily recused himself & asserted that the matter would be brought up by a new Bench on August 19.

The petition comes ahead of the Top Court in the wake of a temporary order approved by the Andhra Pradesh High Court on August 4. The three-Judge Bench of the High Court had approved the State Government ten days to bring in a counter-affidavit in a writ petition enthused by a group of farmers stimulating the constitutional validity of two Government Legislations –

1. To abolish the Andhra Pradesh Capital Region Development Authority &

2. A Devolution Act that trifurcates the State Capital.

While offering such time, the High Court also instructed the status quo to be retained concerning the enactment of these 2 legislations.

The Special Leave Petition, lodged by Advocate Mahfooz Nazki, argues that the High Court Order efficiently staying enactment of Gazetted Notifications (the Governor had given his assent on July 31) is with no valid reasons and terrible in law.

The State further cites several precedents to bolster their argument that the High Court Order resists principles of law whereby the constitutionality of a statute is believed to be upheld until shown otherwise.

The Andhra Pradesh Government contends that by the benefit of the Challenged Order, the Hon’ble High Court had ordered the State Government to preserve the status quo in respect of the Impugned Legislations which, in essence, sums to a stay of the Challenged Legislations. The Impugned Order is, therefore totally contrary to the well-established principle of law that there is always a strong belief in favor of constitutionality & validity of a Statute & the burden is on the person who bouts it to show that there has been wrongdoing of constitutional principles, beyond a rational doubt. The sequence of action boarded upon by the Hon’ble High Court in staying the Impugned Legislations without providing any finding of them be there ex facie unconstitutional is different to the ratio laid down by this Hon’ble Court.

The Petitioner State serves on to highlight on the fact that the legislation which has been continued by High Court not only give consequence to the principle of decentralized development in the State but also replicate the will of the State Legislature on the foundation of Report succumbed by the High-Powered Committee, which was created as a result of considerable deliberations & references over the years.

Contending, therefore, that the temporary Order granted by the High Court is ex-facie untenable, the Petitioner seeks temporary relief by way of a break/stay on the Order passed by High Court.

Efficiently, the High Court Order instructs the Andhra Pradesh Government to preserve the status quo concerning the capital city. This suggests that Amravati would continue to operate as the State’s capital while forbidding the Government to change its administrative capital from Amravati to Visakhapatnam.

As per the new legislation informed in the gazette, Andhra Pradesh is to have three capital cities with Visakhapatnam functioning as the administrative capital, Kurnool as the judicial capital & Amravati as the legislative capital.