Hyderabad: The Hyderabad High Court on Thursday directed the Centre and the governments of AP and Telangana to ensure that their chief secretaries convene meetings of secretaries of energy of both states to arrive at a workable solution for distribution of power sector employees.
A division bench comprising Justice R. Subhash Reddy and Justice A. Shankar Narayana was dealing with a batch of petitions by the employees of Telangana Power Generation Corporation and Telangana State Southern Power Distribution Company Ltd challenging their allotment to the state of AP, and vacate stay petitions by the TS government and the TSSPDCL.
Mr Narayana Reddy, assistant solicitor general, submitted that the Centre has proposed to entrust the matter to the Sheila Bhide committee which earlier looked after the division of assets and liabilities of institutions among both states.
Telangana AG K. Ramakrishna Reddy opposed the proposal and said the Sheila Bhide committee was constituted by the erstwhile government few days prior to the division of AP and it has no legal sanctity.
He contended that any dispute which arose between both the states should be confined to the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014 and it has to be followed.
Counsels appearing for the employees submitted that more than 1,200 employees who were allotted to the AP had not been paid salaries for four months.
The bench suggested that both the states have a committee which will work under the supervision of the HC to resolve the issue as the TS government was not accepting the Sheila Bhide committee.
Justice Subhash Reddy said both the governments should look at this issue from the employees’ perspective. If both the states are unable to reach a workable solution then the court would decide the matter.
