Telangana judges’ protest takes ‘Centre’ stage as 10 suspended

HYDERABAD:The ongoing stir by subordinate judges of Telangana over the nativity issue is snowballing into a bitter showdown with the high court suspending 10 judicial officers on disciplinary grounds even as judicial officers across the state today went on a mass casual leave in protest against the suspension.

Suresh Dharur

Tribune News Service

Hyderabad, June 28

The ongoing stir by subordinate judges of Telangana over the nativity issue is snowballing into a bitter showdown with the high court suspending 10 judicial officers on disciplinary grounds even as judicial officers across the state today went on a mass casual leave in protest against the suspension.

The issue acquired political overtones with Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao throwing his weight behind the agitating district judges and judicial officers and threatening to stage a dharna in New Delhi against the Centre’s “deliberate neglect” of the legitimate demands of the Telangana.

The district judges and judicial officers have been on the warpath, demanding cancellation of the provisional allotment of judges on the ground that officers from Andhra Pradesh were posted in Telangana. They are also demanding immediate bifurcation of the high court to ensure justice to Telangana.

Taking a serious note of the agitation, the high court today suspended eight more judicial officers, including the vice-presidents of the Telangana Judicial officers’ Association S Srinivas Reddy and Chandrasekhar Prasad, for their role in the ongoing stir. Yesterday, the court had ordered the suspension of the president and the secretary of the Association.

Stepping up their agitation, members of the Telangana judicial officers’ association went on a mass casual leave today. “We will continue to be on mass leave till the suspension of our colleagues is revoked,” the association said. Joining the issue, the CM sought to turn it into a Centre-state issue and blamed the NDA government for “neglecting interests of Telangana”.

“Despite our repeated pleas to stop injustice to Telangana in the matter of posting of judges and bifurcation of high court, the Centre has been deliberately neglecting interests of the new state. The CM is pained over the developments and has decided to join his party MPs and MLAs in staging a dharna at Jantar Mantar in Delhi,” a release from the Chief Minister’s Office said. However, Union Law Minister Sadananda Gowda made it clear that the bifurcation of the Hyderabad High Court was an inter-state issue and the Centre would not involve itself in such matters.

Gowda, who met a delegation of the Telangana Bar Council and BJP leaders from the state, said the issue of allotment of subordinate and district judges was between the chief ministers of the two states and judges of the Hyderabad High Court. He said that it was not proper on part of Chandrasekhar Rao to blame the Centre for this. It is for the first time in the judicial history that the civil and district judges have hit the streets.

Over 130 judges from across 10 districts took out a rally in the city on Sunday and submitted a memorandum to Governor ESL Narasimhan, protesting against the allotment of non-local judicial officers in Telangana. They threatened to resign en mass if they did not get justice within a week.