There was an interesting discussion in the Andhra Pradesh high court on Tuesday over the location of chief minister of a state.
The division bench of the high court headed by chief justice J K Maheshwari questioned to what the camp office of a chief minister is.
The post of the chief minister is not like any other government employee. He is the head of the state and can operate from any part of the state. There is no necessity that he has to operate only from the state capital.
For example, when there was a cyclone in Konaseema region in 1996, then chief minister and Telugu Desam Party president N Chandrababu Naidu stayed in the official guest house of Rajahmundry for nearly three weeks and ran the administration from there, besides overseeing cyclone relief operations.
Again, when there was another super cyclone Hudhud in October 2014, Naidu stayed in Visakhapatnam for nearly two weeks and operated from there.
In Telangana, too, there are instances of chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao running the administration from his farmhouse at Erravelli. He has camp offices in Karimnagar and Gajwel as well.
So, wherever the chief minister stays, the government runs from there. In the event of the CM being forced to stay for a few days, there should be an arrangement for him to stay and hold meetings. That is the concept of the camp office.
That is what state government’s advocate general Subrahmanyam Sriram argued in the court, when the high court asked him the propriety of constructing a camp office in Visakhapatnam.
He pointed out that there is nothing wrong in construction of a camp office for CM in Visakhapatnam and it has nothing to do with the shifting of administrative capital. He said there is no rule in the APCRDA act that the CM’s office should be only in Amaravati.
“Wherever the CM requires to stay, he can have a camp office there. One cannot impose restrictions on the functioning of the chief minister. So, why stay on the construction of camp office at Visakhapatnam?” the AG asked.
