K Chandrasekhar Rao faces taxing times

Hyderabad: Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, who took over the top revenue grosser commercial taxes portfolio from minister Talasani Srinivas Yadav recently faces a major challenge of resolving Andhra-Telangana officers tussle in the department that has been adversely affecting its functioning.

The TS Commercial Taxes JAC has been agitating against Andhra native officers still holding key positions in the Telangana even after bifurcation.

In fact, they took up the issue of Andhra officers holding key positions in the commercial taxes department with Mr Rao during Telangana agitation several times and Mr Rao assured them that he would do justice once Telangana state was formed.

Now with Mr Rao himself holding the commercial taxes portfolio, the JAC has stepped up pressure on the government to ensure only Telangana native officers and staff get key positions and AP native staff are given insignificant posts.

The JAC’s main demand is that only Telangana native officers should be given key posts like additional commissioners, joint commissioners, deputy commissioners, assistant commissioners and commercial tax officers.

The commercial taxes department is divided into 12 administrative divisions, each headed by a DT, who is assisted by two ACs and CTOs. The division is sub-divided into circles. There are 93 circles in the state headed by CTO, who is assisted by deputy CTOs and assistant CTOs.

The JAC claims that majority of the key posts like DT, AC and CTOs are held by Andhra native officers. The recent promotions to Andhra native staff further widened the gap between Andhra and Telangana native staff in the department.

Recently, three joint commissioners were promoted as additional commissioners and three deputy commissioners as joint commissioners. The JAC claims that two out of three promotees in both these categories were Andhra-native officers.

JAC president K.M. Venugopal and secretary T. Venkateshwarlu submitted a petition to Chief Secretary Rajiv Sharma and principal secretary Ajay Mishra seeking key posts only for Telangana native officers and staff.

However, the government is in a piquant situation over these demands since there are not enough TS-native officers and staff who were selected based on state merit through Groups exams conducted by APPSC in undivided AP.