Division of assets between TS, AP: SC serves notices on Centre, Telangana

Vijayawada: The Supreme Court has served notices on the Centre and the Telangana governments on a plea filed by the Andhra Pradesh government seeking division of assets and liabilities of the erstwhile AP between the two Telugu states as envisaged under the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014.

A Division Bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and M.M. Sundresh heard the writ petition filed by the AP government with a plea for fair, equitable and expeditious division of assets and liabilities as per norms of the bifurcation act.

As counsels for the Central and Telangana governments did not attend the hearing, the apex court decided to serve notices on them and posted the case for its next hearing after six weeks.

AP, in its petition, maintained that the 91 institutions mentioned in Schedule IX, 142 entities in Schedule X and 12 institutions not mentioned in the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014, were not divided between both AP and TS so far.

It said that the fixed assets belonging to these institutions worth nearly Rs 1,42,601 crore were meant to be divided. Non-division of assets would benefit the Telangana state and this would be a disadvantage to AP, as “a majority of these assets are located in Hyderabad.”

The petition also noted that the as-yet-undivided institutions performed a series of services pertaining to agriculture, education, medical services, industrial and infrastructure development etc.