The Supreme Court on Wednesday stayed the Andhra Pradesh High Court’s gag order on media reporting and social media comments on the contents of the Amaravati land scam FIR.
A bench comprising Justices Ashok Bhushan, R Subhash Reddy and M R Shah passed the stay order on a special leave petition filed by the State of Andhra Pradesh challenging the interim order passed by the High Court on September 15.
However, the Supreme Court has not interfered with the stay order passed by the High Court on the investigation into the FIR registered for Amaravati land scam. In the High Court, a bench of Chief Justice J K Maheshwari passed the interim order in a writ petition filed by the former Advocate General of AP, Dammalapatti Srinivas.
The impugned order stayed the investigation and restrained any media reporting and social media comments as to the FIR registered by the Anti-Corruption Bureau alleging corruption and illegal land transactions in relation to the shift of the capital to Amravati following the bifurcation of the erstwhile state of Andhra Pradesh in 2014.
The allegation in the FIR was that even before the new capital at Amaravati was announced in 2015, there was mass land pool sharing during the period of 6 months before by benamidars of people involved.
The FIR named several prominent individuals, including the former Advocate General.
