T creation a political question: SC

The Supreme Court on Friday said 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 is arising 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. 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 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 without there being a fundamental constitutional paradigm or basis to the exercise of power, senior advocate Harish Salve,appearing for K Srinivas Reddy,said. The courts attention was drawn to the fact that government has appointed B N Srikrishna panel.However,the Bench said it will not go into that aspect as it was not speculating about what would be the recommendation.
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(source-toi)