About three months after Andhra Pradesh was bifurcated and Telangana born, the process of division of assets and personnel in the AP State Road Transport Corporation and creation of two separate entities is yet to be completed.
It is not as if the process is cumbersome, considering the mammoth stature of an organisation that has over 19,000 buses of its own and whose assets are valued at over Rs. 16,000 crore. It boasts of being a Guinness record-holder for running the largest fleet in the world and with an estimated 1.16 lakh-strong workforce, transports over 1.35 crore passengers on an average, every day.
Ever since the bifurcation was announced, senior officials were busy with the exercise of division of assets and personnel. The drafts however, have to be scrutinised by a committee of experts who include former Indian Administrative Service officers Sheila Bhide, A.K. Goel and K.V. Rao, apart from Narasimha Murthy, a Chartered Accountant. When asked, senior officials said there was more than one administrative point that came in the way of a clean bifurcation and creation of two entities for AP and Telangana. The first was the fact that the APSRTC was created in accordance with a Central Act with the Centre and State having a 1:2 share in equity. The third reason is that the orders for creating a Telangana State Road Transport Corporation have to come from the Union Ministry of Surface Transport.
Before the order is issued in New Delhi, the most important pre-requisite, officials say, is that the expert committee has to draft a report on division of assets and submit it to Chief Ministers N. Chandrababu Naidu and K. Chandrasekhar Rao. Once the report gets their nod, it they will be forwarded to Government of India.
Asked about the timeframe for the administrative process, a senior official said it could take anywhere between four to eight weeks for the Telangana State Road Transport Corporation to be created. Meanwhile, G.V. Ramana Rao, who was formerly Executive Director-Operations in the APSRTC has been re-designated as Joint Managing Director in the APSRTC (Telangana). As of now, a senior Indian Police Service officer J. Purnachandra Rao is the Vice-Chairman and Managing Director.
