Employees of power utilities in Andhra Pradesh staged lunch-hour demonstrations across the State protesting the recommendations made by the Justice Dharmadhikari Committee.
The employees, who held protests at Vidyut Soudha in Vijayawada, and at at generating stations, offices of AP-Transco and Discoms across the State on Thursday, said that former Supreme Court judge D.M. Dharmadhikari who is supervising the bifurcation of employees between A.P. and TS power utilities, should adhere to Sections 53 (division of assets and employees of State undertakings), 68 (provisions for various companies and corporations) and 82 (provision for employees of PSUs) of A.P. Reorganisation Act, 2014 (APRA) and limit the employees to allocable posts instead of suggesting to A.P. power utilities to absorb the employees by creating supernumerary posts.
Addressing the gathering at Vidyut Soudha on Thursday, APSEB Engineers’ Association president M. Vedavyasa Rao said the total number of allocable employees in both States belonging to all the utilities covered by the APRA stood at 6,845 (AP-Genco and TS-Genco — 4,013, AP-Transco and TS-Transco — 2,404 and AP-SPDCL (Anantapur and Kurnool districts) and TS-SPDCL — 428) whereas the TS utilities claimed that only 1,157 were unilaterally relieved by them.
The Dharmadhikari Committee was earlier assigned the task of only allocating employees but it suggested the creation of 613 supernumerary posts which would cost about ₹4,700 crore towards salaries and pensions payable to them.
‘SC directions flouted’
The committee has also allegedly ignored the Supreme Court directions to consider seniority as criteria for allocation of employees in tune with its judgment in the case related to the judicial officers of Telangana.
The procedures of recruitment of judicial officers of Telangana and the A.P. power sector employees were similar, Mr. Rao stated.
About 256 employees working on order in the A.P. utilities have exercised their options to the TS utilities and the concept of ‘home district’ proposed to be introduced now would deny them their legitimate right to allocation as per the norms. The employees pointed out that the Dharmadhikari Committee has stipulated that the allocation of employees to the States should be power utility-wise in proportion to the posts sanctioned in each one of them and in accordance with G.Os. 24, 25 and 26 issued by the Energy Department of A.P. under Section 53 of the APRA and that there shall be no excess allocation of manpower to any utility.
