The Andhra Pradesh government got no relief in the R-5 zone case in the Supreme Court as it turned down the State’s plea to suspend the stay imposed by the High Court on the construction of houses for Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) in the above zone where sites have already been allotted.
Hearing the Special Leave Petition (SLP) filed by the Andhra Pradesh government against the High Court’s interim stay order on Friday, a Division Bench of the apex court comprising Justices Sanjeev Khanna and Pankaj Mittal expressed a prima facie opinion that the High Court order under challenge was well considered by a full Bench, and sought to know if it was advisable to permit the government to spend more than ₹1,000 crore from the public exchequer when the writ petitions were still going through the process of adjudication.
Senior counsels Abhisek Manu Singhvi and S. Niranjan Reddy appeared for the State, while senior advocates Unnam Muralidhar Rao, Dama Seshadri Naidu and Shyam Divan represented the aggrieved farmers who gave their lands for the development of capital city in Amaravati.
Besides, the Judges observed that the SLP was connected to capital cases being dealt with by the Supreme Court. Hence, a stay could not be imposed on the High Court order at this stage, they said and called for counters and rejoinders to be filed within three weeks and posted all the related cases to November 2023.
It may be recalled that a full Bench of Andhra Pradesh High Court stayed the construction of houses in R-5 zone on August 3 by insisting that a host of issues were to be seriously debated and the State’s right to alter the masterplan was inextricably linked to the rights of farmers and the implications of ‘Amaravati judgment’ were also to be discussed threadbare.
