A major milestone has been achieved with the Kamalnathan committee finalising the guidelines for the distribution of State-level employees between Andhra Pradesh and Telangana in its meeting here on Wednesday.
Though the Chief Secretaries of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana — I.Y.R. Krishna Rao and Rajiv Sharma — respectively gave their dissent notes with regard to certain provisions in draft guidelines 18(f) and 18 (n) and other issues, the meeting after considering them came out with remedies, but decided to leave it to the Department of Personnel and Training, GoI, to give its view. Telangana officials are believed to have raised serious concerns with regard to 18(f) which said in the event of more posts than the ‘local candidátes’ in a cadre in one State, those from other States would be allotted to those posts on the basis of reverse order of seniority.
This could mean that more juniors from Andhra with long service would get allotted to Telangana. If seniority would be the basis, then Andhra employees would be in the decision making posts in Telangana but would retire in the near future. Sources said that after enhancement of retirement age to 60 years, seniors may not be willing to come to Telangana and thus 18(f) would not create level playing field for Telangana, they added.
Telangana officials objected to 18(n) which said that local status would be decided by the entry in the service register. Instead they suggested it should be decided on the basis of verification of original school certificate. The committee ruled that its efforts would be to ensure genuine local candidates were allotted to the State when the employees exercised their option.
Similarly objections were raised over the proposal to allot the surplus native staff of a cadre in one State to the posts in the same cadre in the other State. However both the political executives apparently in principle agreed to fill the vacant posts and also consider creating supernumerary posts to retain all the native employees.
Sources said that ultimately that decision would resolve the issue. However, supernumerary posts could be created only after the committee released tentative list of allocation of employees to the posts.
Ensuring transparencyThe committee would forward its final guidelines and recommendations after the minutes of the meeting were signed by all the committee members to the Centre for its approval. In the meantime, the committee would notify the cadre strength of united AP as on June 1, 2014 in a couple of days and upload it to ensure transparency.
Once the Centre approved the guidelines, then the committee would upload the tentative cadre division between the two States in the ratio of 58:42 or geographic intensity of an activity. Then options would be sought from the employees for allocation of employees to the posts in each State. If there were any issues after that it would be for the respective governments to sort it out.
The whole exercise is proposed to be completed by end of financial year.
