A division bench of the Andhra Pradesh high court on Tuesday vacated the stay on the appointment of Tirupati MLA Bhumana Karunakar Reddy as special invitee of the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) trust board.
The bench comprising chief justice Prashant Kumar Mishra and justice Satyanarayana Murthy passed the order while hearing a public interest litigation filed by Bharatiya Janata Party leader Bhanuprakash Reddy against the two controversial GOs of the Jagan Mohan Reddy government on appointment of as many as 52 special invitees.
The court said Bhumana can attend the TTD trust board meetings in the capacity of the local MLA. The bench, however, upheld the single bench order suspending the appointment of the remaining 51 special invitees.
Though the state government has suspended the two GOs as per the court order, it has later promulgated an ordinance on the appointment of the special invitees.
The high court bench, while suspending their appointment, asked the state government’s counsels to amend their affidavit in tune with the ordinance and posted the case to two weeks later.
The high court also heard arguments on the criminal antecedents of 18 members of the TTD trust board. Senior advocate Ashwini Kumar brought to the notice of the court that 16 of these 18 members had not filed any counter in the case till date.
Expressing anger at them, the high court bench gave them two weeks’ time to file their counters. If they won’t file their counters before March 11, the court will take up the hearing directly, it warned.