ESL Narasimhan to take call on power employees' division among Telugu states

Hyderabad: All eyes are on Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan, who is yet to take a decision on division of electricity employees between the two Telugu states. Both the states have left the decision to the Governor on the issue since they could not reach any understanding.

While the TS government insists that employees should be divided based on their nativity, AP wants bifurcation of the staff on the basis of their local status. A majority of the 10,000-odd employees of various cadres in Transco and Genco are natives of AP.

If the Governor supports the TS argument, AP will be burdened with surplus staff. If Mr Narasimhan supports AP’s argument, the TS government will have only a limited number of vacancies that it can fill with TS-native staff.

Mr Narasimhan was scheduled to meet ministers of both the states on this issue on March 9, but the meeting has been postponed to March 26 since the AP ministers are busy with the ongoing Assembly session.

After bifurcation of the state, employees of both Transco and Genco were tentatively allotted to both states. In Genco there are 5,019 sanctioned posts, of which only 818 are vacant. Of these 5,019 posts, AP was allotted 2,793 and TS 2,226 posts.

Of the total 4,201 employees, 2,329 were allotted to AP and 1,872 to TS, while AP got 464 of the vacant posts to fill and TS can fill 254 posts. If the employees are allotted on the basis of nativity, the strength of employees in AP will increase from 2,329 to 2800 while it will decrease to 1,401 from 1,872 for TS.

A similar situation prevails in Transco. AP’s insistence that the Transco and Genco employees be allotted on the basis of population is being opposed by TS.

Meanwhile the TS government has relieved 1,250 employees on the basis of they being AP natives. These employees are now waiting for postings.