Hyderabad, Aug. 18 -- The Telangana High Court has held that a court order passed against the state government binds every one of its departments, agencies and officers, even those that were not named as parties in the original case, ruling that the state is a single legal entity and cannot use one department after another to reopen questions already decided against it.

Justice Nagesh Bheemapaka observed that allowing different departments to successively reopen settled issues would reduce court orders to a "dead letter" and strike at the root of the rule of law.

"The state is one juristic entity. Its departments, instrumentalities, agencies and officers are its limbs, and none of them enjoys a juridical existence apart from the state w...