YSR Congress Party MP V. Vijaya Sai Reddy has appealed to the Union Law Minister to set up a Bench of the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) in Visakhapatnam.
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Raising the matter in the Rajya Sabha during the zero hour on Tuesday, Mr. Reddy said that Andhra Pradesh has over 50,000 Central government employees, with over 60% of them residing in the proposed Executive capital Visakhapatnam.
Due to the absence of a CAT Bench in Andhra Pradesh, the petitioners, many of whom are retired have to travel to Hyderabad, in Telangana, for resolution of their disputes. This inter-State travel is a cause of great inconvenience to many of the petitioners, he said. Visakhapatnam is ideal for a new CAT Bench as it has many Central government offices such as a steel plant, shipping and port trusts, HSL, DCIL, railways, railways, airport, customs, excise, HPCL and LIC, wherein thousands of employees work. Mr. Reddy also sought establishment of an Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) in Visakhapatnam. Though a triple IIIT was established in Chittoor, Andhra Pradesh, on the PPP mode, another IIIT was needed in Visakhapatnam, the most populous city in the State and is poised to become the Executive capital. He also sought early completion of permanent buildings for the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), which is presently being run from a temporary campus.