The High Court on Friday sentenced two senior IAS officers to 15 days imprisonment and imposed a fine of Rs 2,000 each in a contempt of court case regarding a cinema hall lease in Nalgonda district. A division Bench of the High Court comprising Justices Goda Raghuram and Ramesh Ranganathan delivered the verdict on Friday but kept the sentence suspended for a month to enable the officers to file an appeal. The court found Principal Secretary,Municipal Administration,Pushpa Subrahmanyam,and former Municipal Commissioner of Nalgonda K Venkateswarlu guilty of contempt of court in a case related to the extension of lease to a cinema theatre in Nalgonda town. Though Nalgonda district Collector Syed Ali Murtaza Rizvi was also a respondent in the case,the court found him not guilty of contempt. The Bench concluded the hearing into the contempt case,filed by Nalgonda Municipal Councillor B Krishna Reddy last week,and reserved the judgment for Friday. The High Court had passed an order in August 2009,based on the original petition of Krishna Reddy,that the municipal authorities had no right to extend the lease of land for the cinema hall without conducting a public auction. However,the Municipal Administration Department extended the lease without following the rules. Following this,a contempt petition was filed. Pushpa Subrahmanyam told the court that she owned up responsibility for the order.
