Telangana seeks office spaces in Hyderabad from AP

Hyderabad: The State government has requested Andhra Pradesh government to hand over office spaces including Secretariat blocks in Hyderabad that are lying unused after latter shifted its administration to Amaravati. However, senior officials of neighboring State responded that their government was yet to take a policy decision on the matter.

This subject was discussed in the meeting of Chief Secretaries of the two Telugu States-SK Joshi from Telangana and Dinesh Kumar from AP, held here on Friday. It may be mentioned here that Telangana government had put up this request on few occasions in the past, but there was no positive response from Andhra Pradesh. 

However, Andhra Pradesh had handed over to Telangana the Legislative Council building allotted to it in Hyderabad after bifurcation. Against this backdrop, Telangana government has raised this issue during the Friday meeting hoping for a positive response.

It may be mentioned here that buildings were allocated to Telangana and Andhra Pradesh in 42:58 ratio, and hence space crunch for Telangana.
The State secretariat is spread over 25.5 acres and has built up area of 9.16 lakh sq.ft. Of this, Andhra Pradesh was allotted 15.21 acres land with a built up area of 5.31 lakh sq.ft while Telangana had to be content with 3.85 lakh sq.ft built up area spread over 10.29 acres.

Also, a decision was taken to convene regular meetings of Ramakrishna Rao and Premchandra Reddy, who have been taking part from the beginning in bifurcation-related issues between the both States. The meeting resolved to hold a meeting of AP Bhavan bifurcation panel at the earliest to expedite the issue. On the issue of DSPs transfer, it was decided to make temporary allocations taking approval from High Court.