Justice Thottathil B Radhakrishnan is all set to take charge as the Chief Justice of High Court of Judicature at Hyderabad for the States of Andhra Pradesh & Telangana, after his appointment was notified.
In a notification dated July 1, Radhakrishnan, who is serving as the Chief Justice of the Chhattisgarh HC, was asked to assume office on or before July 16.
He will now be replaced by Justice Ajay Kumar Tripathi at Chhattisgarh.
The collegium had made the decision in January this year, but it had to be cleared by the Centre and ratified by President Ramnath Kovind.
While Justice Dilip B Bhosale functioned as the acting CJ from May 2015 to July 2016, Justice Ramesh Ranganathan had been working as the Acting CJ since then.
One of the important cases for the new CJ of the Hyderabad HC will be to check and approve the buildings identified for housing the Andhra Pradesh HC at Amaravati.
Last year, after protests rocked the Lok Sabha, then Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad spoke in the Lok Sabha on the matter of bifurcating the Hyderabad High Court and said that Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu had offered four buildings in Amaravati to temporarily host the state's High Court.
The bifurcation would take place according to the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014, the Union Minister said.
Naidu has asked for suggestions by the end of January, so that modifications to the buildings can be made by April, and the court itself can begin functioning by June this year. However, the plans are yet to materialise.
Meanwhile, there has been a growing sentiment that the HC should be set up in the state’s Rayalaseema region, with former Chief Secretary IYR Krishna Rao being the latest person to back the demand.
Stating that the Andhra government was concentrating development in the Amaravati capital region, many are appealing to Naidu to not repeat his ‘mistake’ of developing a single region between Vijayawada and Guntur while ignoring the rest of the state.