NEW DELHI: The Andhra Pradesh government has approached the Supreme Court against the High Court's judgement directing the state government to develop Amravati as the state capital.
The March 3 judgement was seen as a blow to the Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy government which wanted to develop Vishakhapatnam as administrative capital, Kurnool as judicial capital and Amravati as legislative capital.
In a special leave petition, the state government contended the High Court's judgement holding that the State does not have the power to decide on its capital is violative of basic structure of the Constitution.
It also maintained that the High Court's full bench decision is violative of doctrine of Separation of Powers since it preempts the legislature from taking up the issue.
"Under the Federal Structure of the Constitution, every State has an inherent right to determine where it should carry out its capital functions from," it said, listing out other grounds to challenge the decision.
It is to be noted that the the issue had become infructuous since the impugned legislations had been repealed.
A group of farmers, in their plea before the High Court, opposed the scrapping of the Capital Region Development Authority Act and the AP Decentralisation and Inclusive Development of All Regions Act.
The Andhra Pradesh government subsequently repealed the two controversial laws but said it would bring them in a new form.
