Talk it over in 10 days, AP, Telangana told

Sharing of assets under 10th Schedule of AP Reorganisation Act

​New Delhi: The Union Home Ministry on Friday suggested to the Andhra Pradesh and Telangana State governments that if no agreeable formula could be evolved in the next 10 days over the sharing of assets listed under the 10th Schedule of the AP Reorganization Act, 2014, then it would consider constituting a committee to do so.

The Ministry cautioned the two States that if the dispute was not resolved amicably, recourse to legal means would be the only other alternative, according to sources.

"If you do not like the committee's decision on bifurcation of all your assets and liabilities as mentioned in the 10th Schedule of the AP Reorganization Act, 2014, then it is up to you to seek legal remedy.

Better know that your dispute would take long years of litigation. Hope you avoid it, officials of both the States were told at the end of the one-and-a-half-hour-long meeting.

The Home Ministry, which held a meeting on Thursday to discuss the issue of bifurcation of the Bhawan properties located in New Delhi (which currently belongs to both the States), agreed to meet again after a couple of weeks as the Telangana Government had sought additional time to come out with its demands.

The AP Government insisted on sharing the property on 52:48 ratio, sources said. It was at a teleconference that the Chief Secretaries of both the States interacted with the Home Ministry officials.

Today, however, the Chief Secretary of Telangana, S P Singh, Chief Adviser to the Government, Dr Rajiv Sharma, Principal Secretary, Ramakrishna Rao and Resident Commissioner of Telangana Bhavan, Arvind Kumar, were present at the meeting called for by the Joint Secretary of the Home Ministry, Jaideep Govind and Additional Secretary, Dileep Kumar.

Andhra Pradesh was represented by S Balasubramanyam, Principal Secretary, C Kutumba Rao, AP Planning Board deputy chairman and Resident Commissioner of AP Bhawan Anil Singhal.

The committee, which called for the meeting to discuss the sharing of the assets of the erstwhile AP State Higher Education Council of the Tenth Schedule as a test case, had sought the opinion of the two Governments as both of them were reluctant to part with it even after the Supreme Court advised on it.

Andhra officials reportedly insisted that as per the court decision, the property should be shared between the two on population basis. Telangana's stand was against the contention and it insisted on taking over the same in full.

Andhra Pradesh could retain all of the assets of the higher learning institutions located in AP and Telangana was not seeking any portion of it, the officials of Telangana argued.

Finally, the Home Ministry asked both the parties to arrive at a mutually agreeable formula to share the assets within 10 days. In the absence of the same, it would prefer constituting another committee to arrive at a solution.

In case of the Bhawan premises here, Telangana is reluctant to part with it as all of it belonged to the erstwhile Nizam and hence, ‘hereditary’ property of Telangana.

Andhra Pradesh is not agreeing to the same on the grounds that a portion of the land was brought by the combined State in the past and hence "parting with all of it" is not acceptable to it.

There are in addition 44 organizations under Schedule IX and 42 institutions under Schedule X of the Act. A similar meeting will be held again on January 17 to discuss the distribution of Schedule IX properties.