Supreme Court to hear PILs against Telangana statehood

The Supreme Court will examine a batch of Public Interest Litigations (PIL) urging it to restrain the Centre from carving out a separate Telangana state and ensure that normal public life was not affected on account of the agitation.

A bench of justices G.S. Singhvi and Ranjana Prakash Desai asked petitioner P.V. Krishnaiah to furnish details of all the three PILs filed by him on the issue so that “if necessary” they could be tagged together for appropriate consideration.

Mr. Krishnaiah, who is an advocate, has urged the court to restrain the Centre from taking any step for carving out a separate state and has sought an appropriate direction to the authorities to ensure that general public was not put to any inconvenience on account of the year-long agitation.

The petition stated that the power to carve out a new state under Article 3 of the Constitution is vested with Parliament and the same cannot be done without amending Article 371-D which granted certain benefits of reservation in employment, education and other benefits to the locals.

According to the petitioner, apart from normal life being paralysed, courts except the state high court were also not functioning properly due to the agitation and that many government employees, including police personnel, had joined the stir.

The PILs submitted that the agitation in the form of

rasta roko ,

rail roko and disruption of work at the public sector Singareni Collieries Limited besides causing colossal loss of public money and loss of power supply violated Fundamental Rights of the citizens under Articles 14 (Equality) and 21 (Liberty) of the Constitution.

“Because of non-production of sufficient power, not only the Government has imposed power cuts in the entire city (of Hyderabad), but also imposed power cuts in other districts as well as to the farmers,” the petition said.