Telangana High Court reserved orders in a batch of PIL petitions challenging government’s decision to demolish Secretariat building, with the ‘final hearing’ held consecutively for the past four days coming to an end on Friday.
Presenting her contentions, counsel for one of the petitioners, B. Rachna Reddy said Telangana State Cabinet had no complete information on the condition of Secretariat building when it decided on June 16, 2019 to demolish it. Only after the decision was questioned, the Cabinet constituted a technical committee of four engineers-in-chief and cited reasons for arriving at the decision of Secretariat demolition.
“This attracts the Wednesbury principle of unreasonableness. The Cabinet taking an important decision like demolition of Secretariat building without precise information or data is unreasonable and the court can intervene,” Ms. Rachna Reddy said. She told the Bench that Wednesbury principle of unreasonableness says that courts can intervene when the government had taken a decision not considering matters that lawfully must be considered.
‘Relevant matter’
Courts can also review if the government takes a decision by considering matters that are not relevant and if the decision was so unreasonable that no reasonable person would make it. Telangana Cabinet decided to demolish Secretariat building without considering the issues like soundness and durability of the buildings. The Cabinet eventually backed its decision by citing Technical Committee report which took into account irrelevant factors like parking space and wiring issues, she said. “Because of these two factors, naturally the decision becomes unreasonable and liable to be rejected by the court,” the lawyer argued.
Advocate General B.S. Prasad, recalling senior counsel S. Satyam Reddy’s earlier reference to Buckingham Palace in England, said that even Telangana government wants to build such an iconic structure after demolishing the existing Secretariat building. He said that Cabinet took the decision of Secretariat demolition “after discussing” the matter thoroughly.
According to him, there was no basis for the petitioners to attribute ‘mala fides’ to the Cabinet decision. But Ms. Rachna Reddy replied the petitioners never said government had any mala-fide intention “because the government itself did not have proper data as to why it decided to demolish Secretariat”.
