GHMC to have legal advisors for each zone

The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) is planning to have legal advisors for each zone in its limits, besides digitising records of about 7,000 court cases.

The move comes after the State government permitted the municipal corporation to appoint one legal advisor. Accordingly, GHMC appointed a retired district judge as its legal advisor last month.

A team of GHMC officials headed by GHMC Commissioner B Janardhan Reddy conducted the interviews. Eleven applications were filed by retired judges for one post .

After the interviews, Reddy appealed to the State government to permit hiring of services of retired district judges as legal advisors for all the six zones.

The idea is to handle legal issues effectively and get them cleared at the earliest. At present, there 18 advocates, who handle different cases pertaining to the municipal corporation in district courts and the High Court.

The legal advisors guide the



corporation officials in drafting case notes, filing counters more effectively in different cases and explaining the facts pertaining to the cases, said a senior official.

In addition to this, the GHMC is now taking up the gigantic task of digitising records of nearly 7,000 court cases and creating an online module. Till date, records of nearly 5,500 cases have been uploaded to the online module, the official said.

The online module will have all details of every case, including circle-wise cases records. It will have file numbers, case details, the official related with the case, its history and so on, which will facilitate officials in tracking details of cases under their jurisdiction.

Generally, it is tough for them to keep track of each case, the next hearing date and previous arguments of the case. All such details will be now available in the module, enabling officials to effectively handle the case and cut down on time spend in searching for details manually, he added.