The Jagan Mohan Reddy government in Andhra Pradesh is exploring further legal options following the state high court’s judgement on Tuesday that there was no insider trading in Amaravati land dealings and dismissing the cases filed by Crime Investigation Department against those who bought the lands.
Former chief secretary of Andhra Pradesh I Y R Krishna Rao, who had strongly opposed the construction of capital city at Amaravati, suggested that the Jagan government should immediately file an appeal in the Supreme Court, challenging the high court verdict.
Krishna Rao said there were some loopholes in the judgement.
“It is not correct on the part of the high court to say that there was no secret in deciding Amaravati as the capital, since then chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu declared while taking oath itself that the capital would be on the banks of Krishna river,” he said.
He said the common people might not guess from Naidu’s statement that the capital would come up only in that area. The capital issue remained a secret till the government had taken a final decision, he said.
On the high court’s observation that the concept of insider trading, which was related to shares and securities in the stock market, was not applicable to the IPC sections, particularly in land transactions.
“When gaining undue advantage due to leakage information pertaining to a private company can become a crime, gaining benefits due to secret information leaked by the government itself will be a bigger crime,” he said.
Krishna Rao pointed out that the high court judgement would have far-reaching consequences and was not confined to only Amaravati issue.
“In future, any official who is privy to information about a project coming up in an area, can purchase lands in and around the area at cheaper rate and later sell them at higher rates. This will not be treated as a crime, as per the high court order. It will have massive impact on the administration,” IYR said.