Hyderabad: The Hyderabad High Court on Wednesday asked the Southern Power Distribution Company of Telangana to explain under which provision of law had it amended the recruitment rules to enable only citizens of TS to get employment in TS Genco and TS Transco.
A division Bench comprising acting Chief Justice Dilip B. Bhosale and Justice S.V. Bhatt was dealing with a petition by Challa Narasimha Reddy and others challenging the amendments made by TSGenco, TSTransco, TSSPDCL and TSNPDCL.
K. Lakshmi Narasimha, counsel for the petitioners, said that in August 2015, the respondent companies had amended their Recruitment Rules and as per the amendment, the entire state was divided into North Zone and South Zone.
He said according to the new rule any person who was either born in one of these zones or had studied for more than six years in one of these zones would be called a “Local Candidate” for that zone and the ratio for employment between locals and non-local would be 70:30.
He argued that by these amendments, a new citizenship called “Citizens of Telangana” was made, which was unconstitutional, and all these posts were now sought to be reserved in favour of TS born persons only, which was not permissible under the Constitution.
He said as per Article 16(2) of the Constitution the power of reserving posts and determining the local status of a citizen was reserved only for Parliament and not to a company registered under the Companies Act.
He said that these companies had given a notification to fill posts of assistant executive engineers and written tests were scheduled to be held from November 8, 2015 onwards.
When the Bench questioned counsel representing the power utilities, he replied that he would get instructions from the authorities and urged the Bench to adjourn the matter to Friday. The Bench said in the meantime, the petitioners should be permitted to write the examination.
