The existing Secretariat building should not be disturbed until the State government takes a final decision on construction of a new Secretariat, the Telangana High Court said.
A division bench of Chief Justice Raghvendra Singh Chauhan and Justice A. Abhishek Reddy passed this order after hearing a couple of PIL petitions challenging the government’s decision to demolish the existing Secretariat building. The bench said, however, the petitioners were at liberty to approach it if the State Cabinet takes a decision to demolish the Secretariat building.
The petitions were filed separately by Congress Malkajgiri MP A. Revanth Reddy and professor P.L. Vishweshwar Rao seeking an order to restrain the government from bringing down the Secretariat building. They contended that the present Secretariat building was strong enough to last several more years.
Presenting arguments on behalf of the State, Additional Advocate General J. Ramchander Rao told the bench that the government had not yet taken any specific decision on demolition of Secretariat building and construction of a new one. The matter was at the conceptual stage and the government invited designs from national and international consultants for a new Secretariat.
Some proposals had come and some were yet to be received, the AAG said. The matter was in ‘pre-mature stage’ and hence the court cannot review the government’s action, the AAG submitted to the court. A process was involved in taking a final call on the matter and beginning to work on the new building. In this interregnum period, the courts cannot review the government’s proposals and the petitions would not sustain, Mr. Rao said.
Recalling the order it had passed during the previous hearing on January 27 seeking information about the proposed new Secretariat building design and spaces to be made available to different departments, the bench said the government was bound to provide clear details on the matter. Why the government had planned earlier for demolition of the existing Secretariat building when the designs for the new Secretariat were not finalised, the bench sought to know.
Gone were the days when architects used to draw building plans on papers and take longer time, the bench said. In this era of virtual reality world, the architects and designers can create their plans in shorter time and show how the new buildings would look like using technology, the bench added.
