Come June 2, the governments of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh have proposed programmes to coincide with the appointed day for the formal bifurcation of the combined State.
The Telangana government has grandiose plans to celebrate the formation of the new State, but Andhra Pradesh has announced a weeklong ‘Nava Nirmana Deeksha’ to remind people of the challenges ahead in rebuilding the State post-bifurcation.
The celebrations in Telangana have touched a new high as a seven-member mountaineering group belonging to the Adventure Club of Telangana has decided to hoist flags with the map of Telangana on the Himalayas. The State government has surveyed a few sites to construct a tall column for martyrs of separate Telangana movement and organise a parade on the occasion.
More importantly, the Telangana Joint Action Committee, which played a key role in the agitation in the last five years, will hold a meeting on Tuesday to plan its own celebrations.
Demand for pay
hike gets shriller
The demand for 43 per cent hike in basic pay of employees across the State public undertakings is getting louder, both in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, after the two State governments conceded the same to the staff of undivided State-owned Road Transport Corporation. In fact, Telangana went a step further and gave a 44 per cent hike. In these circumstances, the staff of power utilities have resented that the hike of 30 per cent offered to them was unacceptable. They have thankfully not served any strike notice so far, but senior officers are concerned if their unions did so in the midst of summer.
The eight-day strike by the bus crew recently which crippled the normal life is a grim reminder of the shape of things to come.
Bifurcation
blues linger on
There seems to be no end in sight for disputes between Telangana and Andhra Pradesh States, at least in the near future, as new controversies are cropping up even before the existing ones are resolved. A dispute on the division of assets of Andhra Pradesh State Handloom Weavers’ Cooperative Society (APCO), one of the 89 entities listed in the Ninth Schedule of the AP Reorganisation Act, appears to be in the making if some recent developments are observed.
A senior and well-known weavers’ leader of Telangana, Mandala Sriramulu, a former Chairman of APCO, has called on Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao and Textiles Minister Jupally Krishna Rao recently and explained them that serious injustice was done to Telangana in the division of APCO’s assets completed earlier this month.
Mr. Sriramulu said that Hyderabad Weavers’ Cooperative Society (HYCO) had 25 retail outlets in Coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema regions before it was merged into APCO in 1976. However, the division of APCO assets effected recently had given 133 outlets to AP and 55 to Telangana on “as is where is basis” forgetting the fact that 25 outlets in residuary AP belonged to Telangana.
Mr. Sriramulu suggested that APCO’s assets be apportioned on population basis and not on “as is where is basis” so that the assets belonged to TS originally are given to it after bifurcation.
Yet another woman bureaucrat joins CMO
Telangana Chief Minister’s Office has got yet another woman bureaucrat. Exemplary and controversy-free track record appears to have prompted the Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao to prefer woman officers in his office. First, it was Medak Collector Smitha Sabharwal, who won accolades in the district represented by the Chief Minister and made it to the CMO. Now, A. Shanti Kumar, another IAS officer who also served as Medak Collector, has been handpicked by the Chief Minister to head the ambitious Chasing Cell in his peshi. She joined the CMO as Additional Principal Secretary though her Central deputation was to expire later this year.
She would handle the government’s hard pitch to invite entrepreneurs to set up industries in the State. The Chasing Cell was specially created for investors.
–Reporting by N. Rahul,
B. Chandrashekhar
& Ravi Reddy
