Andhra Pradesh Gets Supreme Court Notice After Odisha Says AP ‘Invaded Our Territory & Notified Polls in Villages’

The top court has asked the Andhra Pradesh government to go through the petition and file its reply. The case will be taken up on February 19.

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday issued notice to the Andhra Pradesh government on a petition seeking contempt action against its state officials for notifying Panchayat polls in three villages under Odisha. The Naveen Patnaik government, while moving the petition in the Supreme Court on Thursday, had said the notification amounted to “invading” its territory.

The Odisha government, while seeking urgent listing of their contempt plea, had cited that the officials of the southern state were “willfully violating” the status quo passed by the court in the original suit. It also sought punishment for them for having committed contempt of this court.

Andhra Pradesh, meanwhile, had argued that the elections had been held in these villages earlier also.

The top court has asked the Andhra Pradesh government to go through the petition and file its reply. The case will be taken up on February 19.

The dispute over territorial jurisdiction over 21 villages popularly called as Kotia Group of villages first reached the top court in 1968 when Odisha on the basis of three notifications — December 1, 1920, October 8, 1923 and October 15, 1927 — claimed that Andhra Pradesh had trespassed its well-defined territory.

During the pendency of suit filed by Odisha, the top court had on December 2, 1968 directed both the states to maintain status quo till the disposal of suit and said, there shall be no further ingress or egress on the territories in dispute, on the part of either party .

The suit filed by Odisha under Article 131 of the Constitution was finally dismissed on technical ground by the top court on March 30, 2006, and with the consent of both the states it directed that status quo be maintained till the dispute is resolved.

Now, the Odisha government has sought contempt action against Andhra Pradesh’s three senior officials — Mude Hari Jawaharlal (contemnor-1), collector of Vizinagaram district; Adityanath Das, Chief Secretary of AP (contemnor-2), and N Ramesh Kumar, State Election Commissioner of Andhra Pradesh (contemnor-3).

(With inputs from PTI)