‘Fate of AP-origin power staff will be decided on October 27’

Favourable work atmosphere being created for them, says CMD of TGenco

Serious attempts are on to allot work to as many as 1,157 engineers and employees of power utilities who are natives of Andhra Pradesh and relieved from duties in Telangana following bifurcation of the State, but remained idle for two-and-a-half years as the Andhra Pradesh government refused to absorb them.

“It all depended on creation of a favourable work atmosphere which we are striving for as the aim was to see that work was not affected. We are waiting for court orders in the main case challenging the division of employees on October 27,” said the chairman and managing director of transmission and generation corporations D. Prabhakar Rao.

The allotment of work to AP native employees earlier witnessed hostile scenes and protests at various sites from their counterparts from Telangana. It resulted in stopping engagement of their services till the court decided the matter. The AP native engineers, mostly of the rank of Divisional Engineers and Assistant Divisional Engineers, and employees idled away their time but collected salary from Telangana government without hindrance. The burden on the Telangana government was ₹ 6 crore per month.

Mr. Prabhakar Rao said the unwillingness of AP government to absorb the employees though there were vacancies in that State resulted in the problem. The repatriation of staff to AP hanged fire from early 2015 after the government of that State approached the Supreme Court against sharing of staff salary in the ratio of 42:58 by Telangana and AP respectively as per State reorganisation law. On court orders, the Telangana government started meeting the salary 100 per cent.

Sources said the AP government saw no advantage in the staff with nativity of that State being absorbed by it and dilly dallied the matter to mount pressure on Telangana to concede its demand. The demand was for division of employees in 42 : 58 ratio in each cadre of employment which was not acceptable to Telangana. It was not accepted because engineers in higher cadre were mostly of AP nativity which meant some of them were necessarily to be accommodated in Telangana.

On the other hand, Telangana insisted on maximum period of education from classes four to ten as the basis of nativity which AP did not concede.