Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court will today take up petitions filed by K. Chandrashekar Rao and T. Harish Rao against the Justice P.C. Ghose Kaleshwaram commission. The case highlights a wider debate over whether commissions of inquiry are functioning within the boundaries of law or being used as political instruments.
Kaleshwaram commission procedures and politics in focus
At an earlier session, senior lawyer Aryama Sundaram argued that the commission had failed to serve notices correctly and did not provide the petitioners with its report. Instead, the government presented a PowerPoint presentation of the findings and later distributed copies to the media. According to Sundaram, the petitioners were denied fair access, and the process was used to target the Bharat Rashtra Samithi politically.
The government rejected this line of argument. Counsel pointed out that the report had been uploaded to the official website and shared during a press briefing. Advocate General B.S. Sudarshan Reddy informed the bench that the state had already constituted a three-member committee to study the report and that the government intended to table it in the Assembly.
The bench raised two critical questions: why were petitioners left without the report when journalists had copies, and would the government act on the findings directly or only after debate in the Assembly? The Chief Justice also observed that the report submitted to the court was not clear in parts and required clarification.
