The Supreme Court of Andhra Pradesh withdrew eleven criminal charges against YS Jagan Mohan Reddy for alleged hate speech five years ago against then Prime Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu and defamation of his decision to leave the capital in Amaravati.
The court ordered its law firm to seek review proceedings in relation to all of these complaints.
The contested criminal charges against Mr Jagan Mohan Reddy were recorded in and around 2016 in various jurisdictions and orders were issued by various judges during this period.
A sole judge in the High Court, consisting of Judge K. Lalitha, heard the matter on Wednesday and sent it to June 25 for further argument.
Advocate General (AG) S. Sriram strongly objected to what he called an administrative ruling to request a Suo-Motu revision of the cases, saying correcting lower court orders is essentially a judicial route, and if this were decided the aforementioned orders were fraught with procedural errors, the power exercised by the court should be on the judicial and not the administrative side.
He noted that the court’s decision to seek a review of the cases was tantamount to stepping in the applicants’ footsteps.
Mr Sriram went on to claim that it was inadmissible for the court to conduct a suo motu exercise on the administrative side, and if such a decision had already been made, the papers would only be presented to obtain court approval while neither Section 482 and Section 483 of the Code of Criminal Procedure allowed such a path through the Chancellor (judicially).
Mr Sriram insisted that he only appear for the state, also because there were allegations against the police machinery in the reference the Chancellor (Justice) had drawn from Judge Rakesh Kumar’s order.