The Supreme Court said on Friday that the issue of carving out a separate state of Telangana from Andhra Pradesh was a "political question" which cannot be answered by it. It said no larger constitutional question arose at this stage from the issue as there is no decision on the division of the state requiring its interference to examine the legality.
"We are of the view that at this stage, the larger constitutional question does not arise for consideration. As far as the division of the state is concerned, it is a political question and we cannot answer that," a Bench comprising Chief Justice S H Kapadia and Justice K S Radhakrishnan said. The Bench disfavoured the idea of laying down of guidelines for exercising powers by the government to go into the contentious issue of creating a separate Telangana state from Andhra Pradesh. It said that when a law is proposed for carving out the new state, it would consider the matter afresh. "Till date, no law has been proposed for the purpose of carving out the state and as and when something is proposed or enacted, we will consider it and it will be open for the petitioners to approach this court," the Bench said giving liberty to the petitioners to withdraw their petitions which were filed when the agitation for Telangana was at its peak.
The two PILs had contended that no constitutional power can be exercised arbitrarily and there must be some guidelines or basis in this regard. "Power under Article 3 and 4 is the solemn constitutional power and it is obvious that no constitutional power can be exercised arbitrarily and at will without there being a fundamental constitutional paradigm or basis to the exercise of power," senior advocate Harish Salve, appearing for K Srinivas Reddy, said. He said the manner in which the entire matter relating to creation of a new state was being dealt with proved that there was no established principle for the government to act on such issues.
The court's attention was drawn to the fact that government has appointed Justice B N Srikrishna Commission to look into the creation of Telangana state. However, the Bench said it will not go into that aspect as it was not speculating about what would be the recommendation of the Committee.
