Justice B. Devanand of the Andhra Pradesh High Court sentenced eight IAS officers — Gopal Krishna Dwivedi, M. Girija Shankar, M.M. Naik, B. Rajasekhar, J. Syamala Rao, V. Chinna Veerabhadrudu, Y. Srilakshmi and G. Srkr. Vijay Kumar — to simple imprisonment for two weeks and to pay a fine of ₹1,000 each in a contempt case, but modified his order after the officials tendered an unconditional apology for failing to discharge their duties.
Conceding the officers’ plea, Justice Devanand directed that they should instead visit the social welfare and ST and BC welfare hostels in the districts any one Sunday every month for 12 months, spend some time with the students/wards to motivate them, and arrange a sumptuous lunch or dinner by spending their personal money.
The court said the contemnors should send photos of their visits to the hostels every month to the High Court Registrar (Judicial) to enable him to keep them in the case records.
It was in a batch of writ petitions that the court pulled up the IAS officers earlier for apparently defying its order not to allow the construction of Rythu Bharosa Kendras (RBKs), ward and village secretariats and other buildings on the premises of government schools, and remove such structures which already came up.
While pronouncing his verdict on Thursday, Justice Devanand expressed displeasure that the officers did not consider it their obligation to respect the court order issued in the year 2020, that RBKs and any such government buildings constructed on the schools’ premises should be demolished, but no action had been taken for more than a year.
Justice Devanand assigned Mr. Dwivedi to Krishna district, Mr. Girija Shankar to Prakasam, Mr. Rajasekhar to Srikakulam, Mr. Chinna Veera Bhadrudu to Vizianagaram, Mr. Syamala Rao to Anantapur, Ms. Srilakshmi to West Godavari, Mr. Vijay Kumar to Kurnool and Mr. Naik to Nellore for visiting the hostels.
