In the three years between 2021 and 2023, one senior bureaucrat in Andhra Pradesh was named the first respondent in nearly two thousand contempt of court cases. SS Rawat, who served as the Principal Secretary of Finance under the YS Jagan Mohan Reddy government, was repeatedly hauled up by the court for the government’s inability to release payments for various public works within the stipulated deadlines.
Though alarming, such cases had become routine during the YSR Congress Party (YSRCP)’s five-year governance from 2019 to May 2024. The opposition Telugu Desam Party (TDP), which governed the state from 2014 to 2019, frequently used these cases as political ammunition.
Rawat wasn’t the only senior official dragged repeatedly to court. Former Principal Secretary for Panchayat Raj and Rural Development, Gopal Krishna Dwivedi, and former Water Resources Secretary, Shashi Bhushan Kumar (now the Panchayat Raj Secretary), also faced a steady stream of contempt notices during this period.
In addition to being the first respondent in 1,932 cases, Rawat appeared as the second respondent in hundreds more. A lawyer involved in multiple petitions told TNM that Rawat had to appear before the Andhra Pradesh High Court around 100 to 125 times.
A large portion of these cases related to pending dues owed to public works contractors, who form a major political lobby in the Telugu states. Most of these contractors were hired to supply materials for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), or to execute projects for the TDP’s flagship water conservation scheme, ‘Neeru Chettu’.
When the government delayed payments, the contractors moved court. The deadline set by the court for the clearance of dues was breached by the government, resulting in a raft of contempt proceedings against bureaucrats.
From 1,773 cases in 2018, the number of contempt petitions filed in the Andhra Pradesh High Court rose to 2,263 in 2021, then surged to 6,748 in 2022 and 6,986 in 2023. According to the National Judicial Data Grid, Andhra Pradesh ranked fourth in the country for contempt filings in 2023 — behind only the High Courts of Allahabad, Madhya Pradesh, and Odisha.
Three patterns help make sense of this surge.
First, the role of the TDP, led by N Chandrababu Naidu, which was in opposition during the period. The TDP made it one of its campaigns to muster contractors and pro-TDP lawyers against the government. Most of these contracts had been awarded during TDP’s governance between 2014 and 2019.
The TDP claimed that the YSRCP was unfairly targeting people hired during the TDP’s tenure and not paying them their dues. The party actively encouraged contractors to move court seeking the clearance of dues, then follow up with contempt petitions when the court-mandated deadlines for payment were breached.
The second reason for the massive pile-up of cases is the positions taken by the YSRCP government on the quality of the completed projects. The YSRCP contended that works weren’t completed in several cases or were executed in a substandard fashion. It was seen as a comment on the previous TDP government.
However, the evidence the YSRCP government produced — via a vigilance report — was ruled as ‘arbitrary and irrational’ by the High Court. The YSRCP also argued that the contracts had been awarded by the TDP to line the pockets of its party workers, dubbing the Neeru Chettu programme a ‘scam’.
Third, with the contractors overwhelming the judiciary, the court was compelled to club several writ petitions together. In at least five court documents accessed by TNM, the court heard batches of writ petitions (ranging from payments to be made to 73 contractors to over 1,000 contractors) related to non-payment of dues. When the bureaucracy was unable to make payments for several people within the stipulated time, a litany of contempt cases subsequently flooded the courtrooms.
The sheer volume of these cases involving senior officials — especially one finance secretary — reveals a deeper crisis of governance in Andhra Pradesh. Was the Principal Secretary of Finance unfairly targeted? Was he in the wrong? Or was he a scapegoat for institutional failures beyond his control?
The TDP legal cell and contempt of court
Introduced in December 2014, the ‘Neeru Chettu’ scheme aimed to make Andhra Pradesh ‘drought-free’ through water conservation initiatives such as desilting minor irrigation tanks and strengthening bunds. However, after the YSRCP came to power, the non-payment of bills related to the scheme became a political flashpoint. Naidu alleged that dues amounting to Rs 1,277 crore were pending, along with an additional Rs 500 crore for which tokens had not even been generated.
In October 2021, Naidu launched a grievance cell to help contractors in recovering payments tied to Neeru Chettu.
The TDP’s legal cell, alongside several independent lawyers representing contractors, filed one writ petition after another. Two lawyers associated with the TDP legal cell told TNM that they often worked at very low fees, since small-time contractors were invariably unable to afford legal costs. “Aside from meeting basic expenses, the party paid us a meagre fee to file these cases,” they said.
Another lawyer said that many worked at such subsidised rates in the hope of being appointed as government pleaders or standing counsel if and when the TDP returned to power. “I cannot survive in the profession without the party,” he admitted.
Among the TDP legal cell’s frequent petitioners were lawyers Ramesh Babu Talluri, Burlu Chandrashekar, and Prashanti Gude. Notably, Gude was appointed assistant government pleader after the TDP returned to power in June 2024.
Data also shows Bokka Satyanarayana, a former government pleader during the TDP’s 2014 term, filed around 192 contempt cases against bureaucrats like Rawat and Dwivedi. Lawyer Narra Srinivas Rao appeared in 324 such cases between 2021 and 2023. Lawyer Bathala Ramesh handled 1,154 contempt cases, many routed through the TDP legal cell.
Above: Data representing lawyers who filed contempt of court cases between 2022 and 2024.
“Once the court began entertaining writ petitions, the word spread. Several contractors approached lawyers who had no political connection whatsoever,” one of the lawyers said.
He added, “Never in my two decade long career have I seen so many contempt cases filed.”
Usually, the secretary of a specific department is held in contempt for non-compliance. However, since most of these cases involved financial issues, the Principal Secretary of Finance — Rawat — was added as a contemnor, following a judicial directive, he said.
MGNREGA-related works
A batch of 73 writ petitions heard in March 2021 by Justice DVSS Somayajulu involved MGNREGA contractors who hadn’t been paid for work done between October 2018 and May 2019. Among other defences, the YSRCP government cited a pending vigilance inquiry against corrupt contractors, launched in May 2020, as the reason for withholding payments.
The court, however, ordered the government to make the deducted payment for works costing up to Rs 5 lakh within 30 days, and to complete the inquiry in two months. He further stated that if no wrongdoing was found on the part of the contractors, even the deducted amount should be released.
But this went on for almost a year, with the vigilance stating that it had not completed its enquiry and the government withholding payment.
In his judgement in October 2021, Justice Devanand ruled that the YSRCP government “unlawfully withheld the amounts payable to the petitioners (contractors) without any reason or authority.” Ruling the deductions “arbitrary and unjust,” the judge ordered the state to clear all the bills submitted by the contractors, with 12% interest.
While the verdict points to the YSRCP’s misgovernance, the judgement also ensured that contractors who had potentially not finished their works were required to be paid.
TNM reached out to former Andhra Pradesh Finance Minister and YSRCP leader Bugganna Rajendarnath to enquire about the delay in the vigilance report. “The Vigilance Department was heavily short-staffed, so they were unable to probe all the works. That’s why a sample of 11,000 odd works was preferred,” he said.
Justice Devanand’s order became the grounds for a wave of new writ petitions. One after another, contractors became eligible for payment.
In October 2023, a division bench of the Andhra Pradesh High Court modified Devanand’s order, stating that if the YSRCP government wished to conduct a further enquiry into the quality of the 11,918 works, it could do so — but only after giving contractors a chance to explain themselves.
When asked whether such an inquiry took place, Bugganna said the Vigilance Department had been unable to carry it out. The responsibility was passed back to the Panchayat Raj and Water Resources departments. “It was there that the inquiry got stalled, as no department was willing to probe their sister department,” he said.
Neeru Chettu
As of May 12, there were 297 pending contempt cases against Rawat from 2023 alone, all linked to unpaid Neeru Chettu works executed during the TDP regime, particularly in the lead-up to the 2019 elections. As the data below shows, maximum contracts for Neeru Chettu were given in June, March and October 2018.
Above: Data representing the number of contracts and the month/year they were given to contractors in under Neeru Chettu scheme.
After coming to power, in August 2019, the YSRCP ordered another Vigilance inquiry into works executed under Neeru Chettu, but party leaders TNM spoke to were unclear about its status. On April 8, 2025, the TDP government dropped disciplinary action against 386 Water Resources Department engineers who had executed Neeru Chettu works between 2014 and 2019, despite earlier Vigilance recommendations. Yet, nearly a year into TDP rule, bills amounting to Rs 99.24 crore under the scheme remain unpaid.
The current Principal Secretary of Finance Peeyush Kumar told TNM that a committee of chief engineers has been constituted by the Panchayat Raj Department to examine cases individually and clear pending bills.
Though Peeyush Kumar has replaced Rawat as Principal Secretary of Finance, it’s unclear if he has also taken over as respondent in the ongoing contempt cases related to Neeru Chettu and MGNREGA. What is clear is that contractors and their lawyers are no longer pursuing these cases actively. Whether due to the YSRCP’s failure to clear dues or quiet manoeuvring by the TDP, the result has been the same: Rawat, largely alone, faced contempt proceedings in court after court for years.
TNM reached out to Rawat for comment, but he was unavailable. Shortly after the change in government, he went on a long leave.