Centenary celebrations of HC building tomorrow

: The centenary celebration of the iconic building of the Telangana High Court would be held Saturday.

Three Supreme Court judges-Justice N V Ramana, Justice L Nageswara Rao and Justice R Subhash Reddy- besides acting Chief Justice ofTelangana High Court Justice Raghvendra Singh Chauhan and other judicial officers would attend the celebrations.

The historic building, located on the southern bank of Musi river and built of pink granite and sandstone in Mughal-Saracenic style nearly a century ago, is a renowned landmark and was inaugurated on April 20,an official release said.

The plan of the building was drawn up by Shankar Lal of Jaipur,an eminent engineer and architect of those times and designed by a local engineer Mehar Ali Fazal.

The building stands on the ruins of the Qutub Shahi palaces, Hine Mahal and Nadi Mahal, the release said.

In 1956, Andhra Pradesh state was created on linguistic basis, and the Andhra Pradesh High court was established in the existing high court building in Hyderabad on November 5, 1956.

On August 31, 2009, a devastating fire broke out in the judges' library on the first floor of the main building due to an electrical short-circuit. Work on restoring the grandeur of the edifice was taken up and the renovated conference hall and judges lounge were inaugurated on October 13, 2011.

The erstwhile state of Andhra Pradesh was bifurcated on June 2, 2014 into Telangana and the residuary state of Andhra under the Andhra Pradesh Re-organisation Act 2014. The Andhra high court was renamed as the Hyderabad High Court, common to the two states till the formation of a separate high court for Andhra Pradesh.

Consequent to a Central notification on December 26, 2018, a separate high court was formed for Andhra and the high court of Hyderabad was renamed as Telangsana High Court from January 1, the release added.