Justice T. Vinod Kumar of the Telangana High Court had issued notices to the State government and Hyderabad Metro Rail Limited after a writ petition was filed by a woman seeking compensation of ₹1.7 crore from them, alleging that she sustained a serious head injury due to their negligence during the construction of Metro Rail in 2017.
Through her petition, Uzma Hafeez of Rein Bazaar in Old City, requested the Bench to instruct the government, HMRL and L&T Metro Rail Hyderabad Limited to pay ₹60 lakh interim compensation. The 44-year-old woman stated that she was pillion riding at Nampally on March 11, 2017, when a steel rod from the under-construction HMR fell on her head.
She was shifted to a private hospital, and an FIR was issued by Nampally police. She also stated in her petition that she was in coma for five days and had an operation after that. The injury caused serious health problems resulting in seizures, memory loss for short periods and imbalance in walking, the petition said.
The petitioner added that when she had approached the HMRL for compensation, the latter wrote to LTMRHL stating that she should be adequately compensated. With no response from the persons concerned, she moved the State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission, which eventually dismissed her petition observing that she was not a consumer of HMRL, her counsel Sripada Prabhakar said. She knocked HC doors after this.
Nurses’ promotion
In a separate matter, the Telangana High Court had instructed the State government not to exclude regular appointed staff nurses while giving promotions.
This interim direction was issued by a Bench of Chief Justice Ujjal Bhuyan and Justice C.V. Bhaskar Reddy while hearing a writ petition filed by nine women working as staff nurses in State Medical and Health department. The petitioners contended that recently the government decided to promote staff nurses.
But the rules issued by the Medical and Health department indicated that promotions were being considered for only those staff nurses who got elevated from the category of Multi Purpose Health Assistants. The petitioners told the Bench that they have B.Sc. degrees and served the department for 10-25 years.
They requested the court to pass orders to consider them for promotion to the post of Public Health Nurse (Teaching).
