Justice Samudrala Govindarajulu of the AP High Court on Thursday reserved orders to August 2, on a bail petition by V.D. Rajagopal, retired MD of mines and geology department and one of the accused in the illegal mining case involving the Obulapuram Mining Company. Opposing his bail, the CBI said that after the arrest of Ali Khan, PA to mining baron Gali Janardhan Reddy, it had collected data to ascertain Reddy’s and his associates’ illegal mining activity in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.

The judge sought to know from CBI counsel about the relevance of his argument with regard to the arrest of Ali Khan and also whether there was any relation between Ali Khan and Rajagopal. When the counsel failed to reply properly, the judge cautioned the CBI to not make vague allegations. Counsel for the petitioner contended that the CBI had completed investigation regarding his client’s role and was unnecessarily keeping him behind bars upon the pretext of a continued hearing.

Schools want AP to prevent stirs
A petition was filed in the AP High Court by the AP Recognised Schools Managements Association, seeking a direction to the state government on taking the necessary steps to prevent bandh calls being given by various political parties and students’ organisations, targeting educational institutions.

The association, represented by its president, S. Srinivas Reddy, filed the plea, stating that as many as 40 bandh calls were given during the 2011-12 academic year, the current academic year there were five since June 12, called variously by the TRS, Telangana JAC, ABVP, AISF and PDSU. They resorted to vandalism, causing damage to property, buildings, furniture and vehicles if any school or college did not toe the line. The petitioner told the court that the syllabus for the last academic year could not be completed satisfactorily due to the loss of 40 days due to such bandhs.

Transstroy-JSC file dam plea
The Transstroy-JSC, one of the unsuccessful bidders for the Indirasagar Polavaram dam project, on Thursday moved the AP High Court, seeking a direction to declare illegal the action of the state government in finalising the bidding process. The company said the authorities opened only the bids of SEW Infra and the Soma-CGGS-JV. There was no transparency in opening the bids. The company said that there was no communication from the authorities with regard to opening the bids, the information was not even uploaded on the website; they had come to know about it through newspapers.

Ex-MLA seeks to implead in CDR
A. Jaya Prakash, former MLA, has moved the High Court, seeking a direction to implead him as one of the parties in a public interest litigation by Bhushan B. Bhavanam with regard to CBI director V.V. Lakshm-inarayana’s call data row. Jaya Prakash told the court that the plea was aimed at undermining the morale of the investigating agency and its officers, which is inquiring into cases of disproportionate assets and other financial irregularities resorted to by the high and mighty in AP.

He said that the accused in the cases were abusing their positions of power by causing wrongful loss to the state and availing of ill-gotten gain for themselves while all along distracting people’s attention from the monster of corruption. He alleged that Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, the prime accused in the illegal assets case, and his associates obtained the call lists of the investigating officers, journalists, witnesses and social workers, contravening the provisions of the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885. Their action also infringed upon the right to privacy under Article 21 of the Constitution of India, he added.

HC posers on MBBS admission
A Division Bench, comprising Justice V. Eswaraiah and Justice N. Ravi Shankar of the High Court, on Thursday asked the additional advocate-general what the difficulty was in implementing transparent procedures while filling management quota seats in private medical colleges in the state for the current academic year. The Bench was hearing the arguments on petitions by several aspirants to the MBBS seats under the management quota. K.G. Krishna Murthy, additional advocate-general, who appeared on behalf of the state government and the NTR University of Health Sciences, read out the rules framed for minority colleges as per the judgement of the HC Bench, which said that the concept of transparency could be made applicable to the non-minority private colleges too.

Murthy, replying to a question from the Bench on whether students could be allowed to download application forms and submit them online, said that might be difficult now. S. Ravi, senior counsel, appearing for some private medical colleges, contended that they did violate GO 136 and wanted to know how they could be accused of violating the law without there being any proof shown. The arguments will continue on Friday.