HC pulls up TS top brass; issues notices to CS

The court has taken a serious note of the Telangana government’s adamant approach and issued notices to all responsible officials. It also gave four weeks’ time to the Telangana government to explain the reasons for relieving the employees without any prior information and asked why the Transco has failed to obey the interim orders so far

Hyderabad: With the fate of 1,253 employees belonging to Andhra Pradesh who were relieved by Telangana power utilities recently hanging in balance, the High Court on Tuesday served notices on Telangana Chief Secretary Rajiv Sharma and TSTransco and TSGenco Chairman and Managing Director D Prabhakar Rao for not implementing the stay orders issued recently.

The AP Electricity Board Engineers’ Association filed a petition in the court challenging the relieving orders issued by the Telangana government on June 10 to AP born employees. In a quick response, court stayed the orders on June 12. As the government failed to adhere to the orders, the association again approached the court.

The court has now taken a serious note of the Telangana government’s adamant approach and issued notices to all responsible officials. The court also gave four weeks time to the Telangana government to explain the reasons for relieving the employees without any prior information and asked as to why the Transco failed to obey the interim orders so far.

In another setback, the Telangana government withdrew its petition filed before a division bench seeking quashing of the stay orders issued by a single judge bench. The government did not show any particular reasons for the withdrawal of the petition. AP association leaders said a total of 1,253 employees were out of their jobs and clueless because of the unilateral, unconstitutional and unjustifiable actions of the Telangana Transco. The employees got only 11 day salary for June month.

Vidhyuth JAC Convenor (Hyderabad) V Anuradha said the ‘aggrieved’ employees were demanding to frame guidelines on the lines the Kamalnathan Committee which prepared modalities to shift the employees on nativity basis post bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh. The AP government also expressed its readiness to prepare the guidelines with the involvement of the Telangana government. But the Telangana government turned it down, she said.

The Telangana Electricity Employees (TEE) JAC, in a counter move, lodged a complaint to the Governor. The JAC pointed out that Section 82 of the Reorganisation Act was applicable to State Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs), corporations and other autonomous bodies which mandated to determine the modalities for distributing the personnel between the two successor States within a period of one year. Subsequently, Telangana utilities relieved ‘non local’ employees on June 10, as a final step in the division of employees between two States, the JAC added.