HYDERABAD: To check the “highhandedness” of bureaucrats and for ignoring the direction of the Telangana High Court in a contempt petition, three senior state officials have been awarded a punishment that will serve as an example for others. Two officials have been handed over simple imprisonment.
Those found guilty of disobedience of the court order include the Siddipet District Collector P Venkatrami Reddy. The matter pertained to a contempt petition relating to the acquisition of land for the construction of a reservoir.
Justice M S Ramachandra Rao, while allowing the contempt petition held the officials guilty of wilful disobedience.
The Siddipet District Collector Venkatrami Reddy and Special Deputy Collector (Land Acquisition) Jayachandra Reddy have been sentenced to three and four months simple imprisonment. The court spared an earlier collector Sidepet Collector D Krishna Bhaskar of imprisonment but fined him Rs 2,000.
The Judge has suspended the sentence of the two officials for a period of six weeks. But imposed a cost of Rs 25,000 and Rs 50,000 on Venkatrami Reddy and Jayachandra Reddy respectively, besides imposing a fine of Rs 2,000 each.
The court further ordered that an adverse entry shall be recorded in the service records of these two officials.
In an earlier verdict, the same judge had awarded three months simple imprisonment to Bhaskar, then joint collector Yasmin Basha and Revenue Divisional Officer for willfully disobeying the court’s order.
The court directed the officials to initiate fresh proceedings, and pay the petitioners’ compensation, relief and rehabilitation benefits they were entitled to by strictly following the provisions of the Right to Fair Compensation, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013.
The matter related to the state government’s preliminary notification in 2017 for the acquisition of land under the act for the construction of Komaravelli Mallannasagar reservoir as part of the Kaleswaram Lift Irrigation scheme with a storage capacity of 50 TMC.
In an interim order on December 13, 2019, the court had directed the authorities not to dispossess the petitioners from their lands and not to change the physical features of the lands until further orders. The petitioners came to the court saying that the interim order was violated by the officials and filed petitions seeking to punish them for contempt of court.