Public money paid to babus’ laywers, HC told

The Hyderabad High Court on Wednesday directed the AP government to place before it the receipts of payment made by six IAS officers to their advocates who availed financial assistance from the government of undivided AP to fight cases with regard to the Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy illegal investments case.

A division bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Ramesh Ranganathan and Justice T. Rajani made it clear that if receipts were not placed before the court, it will order recovery from the each of the IAS officers.

The bench was dealing with a petition by one A.V. Ramana of the city, seeking to declare the action of the authorities in not considering his complaint to conduct inquiry against the six IAS officers who availed the financial assistance.

Penjuri Venugopal, counsel for the petitioner, informed the court that AP government had on February 19, 2014 provided financial aid of `7.56 lakh each to IAS officers K. Ratna Prabha, Manmohan Singh, Adityanath Das, S.V. Prasad, B. Sam Bob and M. Samuel to pay the lawyers for defending them before the Supreme Court.

He said that the IAS officers have to obtain stamped receipts from the advocate for the fee and should furnish these to the state. The petitioner in his complaint had asked the government to conduct an inquiry against the six IAS officers to ascertain whether they have paid the money to the lawyers or not.

D. Ramesh, counsel for the AP government, submitted that the IAS officers paid the money to the advocates engaged to appear on their behalf through online mode.

While referring to the receipts, the bench asked Mr Ramesh if it was not the responsibility of the officers to submit the receipts to the government when they paid public money.