The writ petition filed by the Amaravati Parirakshana Samithi managing trustee Gadde Tirupathi Rao and two others in the Andhra Pradesh High Court against the State government’s alleged attempt to shift the capital from Amaravati to Visakhapatnam under the guise of providing transit accommodation for the Chief Minister, the Ministers and senior officials in the Port City to facilitate review meetings and field visits there, was adjourned to a future date on January 2 (Tuesday).
The case was adjourned because Justice R. Raghunandan Rao recused himself from the hearing on the ground that advocate Sanjay Suraneni, who appeared for the petitioners, was previously his junior counsel.
As a consequence, Chief Justice Dhiraj Singh Thakur directed that the matter be listed before another Bench.
Special government pleader C. Sumon requested the Chief Justice for an early hearing, and the latter reportedly conceded it.
The Division Bench, comprising the Chief Justice and Justice Raghunandan Rao, was dealing with the writ appeal filed by the State against an interim order of Justice N. Venkateswarlu not to move any office to Visakhapatnam till the matter was heard by a full Bench in an appropriate manner (tagging it with the pending ‘three capitals’ cases or otherwise).
It may be recalled that a full Bench of the High Court had issued an order in the nature of a writ of mandamus, restraining the State from shifting the capital in the name of decentralisation, by insisting that it (the State) had no legislative competence to change the capital.
