A Division Bench of Hyderabad High Court comprising Justice V. Ramasubramanian and T. Amarnath Goud on Wednesday said it will hear the final arguments on March 14 in the case filed challenging the action of the Telangana government in conferring Cabinet status on advisers, special representatives of the government and chairmen of various government corporations.
This PIL was filed by A. Revanth Reddy, MLA from TDP now in Congress. He contended that this conferring of Cabinet status is illegal. Article 164 (1A) of the Constitution imposed a ceiling of 15% of ministers, who enjoy the status of Cabinet rank, of the total strength of Members of Legislative Assembly. The Telangana government told the court that there was no bar as such in law and the government wanted to honour the persons holding these posts. This case was listed for first time last February.
The MLA had filed a petition requesting for expeditious hearing. The case came up for hearing on Wednesday and the Bench directed the government to file counter affidavit before March 14. No further time will be given.
The leaders, who got the cabinet rank and named by the petitioner, include G. Vivekananda, R. Vidyasagar Rao, A.K. Goel, advisor, A. Ramakrishna, B.V. Appa Rao, K.V. Ramanachary, G.R. Reddy (finance) and Chairman Telangana State Official Languages Commission Devulapally Prabhakar Rao, Chairman of Telangana Tourism Development Corporation Pervaram Ramulu and TSRTC Chairman Somarapu Satyanarayana, Chairman of Telangana State Road Transport Corporation (TSRTC)Singireddy Niranjan Reddy Vice-Chairman of the Telangana State Planning Board, Pidamarthi Ravi, Chairman of Telangana Scheduled Castes Co-operative Development Corporation Ltd , Prasanth Reddy, Vice-Chairman of Telangana Drinking Water Supply Corporation Ltd, Koppula Eshwar, Chief Whip of the Government and K.M. Sahni, Ramachandrudu Tejavath, S Venugopalachary special representative of Telangana at New Delhi.
