Telangana Bar Council urges Governor to hold a meeting of the two chief ministers

The Council wants expedition of the process of bifurcation of the existing high court between the two states

Chairman and members of the Bar Council of Telangana on Thursday met Governor E S L Narasimhan and requested him to convene a meeting of the two chief ministers for expediting the process of bifurcation of the existing high court between the two states.

Though the entire process of identifying buildings for the High Court in AP was to be over within six months from the date of directions issued to this effect by the High Court on May 1, 2015, nothing concrete has been done to implement these directions, the Bar Council delegation stated in a letter submitted to the governor on this occasion.

They also sought the governor's intervention on other related issues including the suspension of 11 judicial officers and the contentious provisional allocation of the subordinate judicial officers between the two states based on the options.

It may be recalled that the judges of lower courts in Telangana took out a protest rally on June 26, 2016 against the process adopted by the High Court for the provisional allocation of judicial officers, which was allegedly favorable to the officers of the Andhra origin.

All the lower courts across the state were shut down for more than a week as the judicial officers and lawyers intensified their protest following the suspension of some of the judicial officers for violating the discipline by the high court. However, they all rejoined the duties in the first week of this month after Governor Narasimhan and High Court acting chief justice Justice Dilip Bhosale promised to look into their grievances.

On the issue of provisional allocation of the officers the Bar Council maintained that the options exercised by the judicial officers from Andhra Pradesh state were contrary to the guidelines issued by the high court.

Though the judicial officers were assured that the suspension against 11 of their colleagues would be revoked, no action was forthcoming to revoke their suspension, the delegation informed the governor.

"The governor has assured us of action on all these issues. He also advised us to meet the High Court chief justice on the question of revocation of suspension," N Ramachandra Rao, member of Bar Council of India, who is also the member of Telangana Legislative Council, told Business Standard.

Meanwhile, Telangana government has decided to implead in a petition filed by the Telangana judicial officers association in the Supreme Court on the process of allocation of subordinate judicial officers to the two sibling states. Earlier this week the Supreme Court had asked the Centre to submit a report on the process of bifurcation of judicial machinery between the two states. The matter was posted to July 21.