The Telangana Rashtra Samithi has proposed to the Centre that it is willing to support the GST Bill in the monsoon session of Parliament if a separate High Court for Telangana is sanctioned. Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, who is in New Delhi on a three-day tour, told his party MPs on Saturday that he would convey the same to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Finance Minister and the Parliamentary Affairs Minister when he called on them in the next three days.
KCR is in the national capital to attend the inter-state council meeting chaired by the PM on Saturday, 16 June, and will return to Hyderabad on Tuesday.
KCR chaired a meeting of TRS MPs at the 23 Tughlak Road bungalow in New Delhi allotted to his daughter and Nizamabad MP, Kavitha. The TRS has 11 MPs in the Lok Sabha and three in the Rajya Sabha, besides three Lok Sabha members who defected to it from the Congress, YSR Congress and the TDP.
After the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh two years ago, the AP High Court has been named as High Court of Judicature at Hyderabad, with jurisdiction over both the Telugu states.
The ruling TRS is under pressure from the advocates’ joint action committee (JAC), which played a major role in the separate statehood agitation, to press for the creation of a separate HC for Telangana.
The Telangana advocates have been objecting to the presence of a large number of HC judges and judicial officers in the lower courts of the state, as the HC is still not divided.
TRS MPs had rushed to the Well in the Lok Sabha in the budget session demanding a separate HC for Telangana.
The judicial officers up to the level of sessions court and the lawyers of all courts were on strike for over six weeks.
However, they called off the stir last week following an assurance from Supreme Court Chief Justice T.S. Thakur.
KCR himself wanted to sit on a dharna at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi to protest against the delay in creating a separate HC.
But Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and the then Law Minister, D.V. Sadananda Gowda assured him that PM Modi would solve the issue at the earliest and asked him to not to go ahead with his planned dharna.
But the Centre needs to overcome the objections from the Andhra Pradesh government where its ally Telugu Desam Party (TDP) is in power.
AP Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu is in no hurry to provide a temporary building and infrastructure for a separate HC as he is still grappling with the task of shifting the state secretariat from Hyderabad to Amaravati, AP’s new capital. Naidu told a media conference recently in Vijayawada that he would like to shift the AP HC at a permanent building which is under construction at Amaravati in the next two years.
But the Telangana government is not ready to wait for that long. The Centre has made it clear that the cost of maintenance of the new HC will be borne by the AP government.
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