Hyderabad High Court directs AP, TS top officials to divide APAT assets, staff

Hyderabad: The Hyderabad High Court on Friday directed that the Chief Secretaries of both AP and TS meet before December 7 and take steps to sort out the dispute with regard to division of employees and assets of AP Administrative Tribunal between the two states.

A division bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Ramesh Ranganathan and Justice A. Shankar Narayana was dealing with a petition by K. Srinivas, an advocate seeking to declare as illegal the action of the TS government in not receiving the bills submitted by the APAT.

AP advocate-general Dammalapati Srinivas submitted that the AP government paid more than its share to the employees working in the institutions mentioned in Schedule 9 and 10 of the AP Reorganisation Act 2014.

He said that about Rs 34 crore has to be returned by TS to AP as the latter paid in excess of its share towards the employees’ salaries.

Mr Srinivas said it would cause additional financial burden on AP if it were to bear the salaries and administrative expenses of the APAT alone.

The A-G told the court that the Centre has issued a notification deleting TS from the jurisdiction of APAT following a request from Telangana. However, though TS has been deleted from jurisdiction of APAT, distribution of its assets and employees is still pending, he said.

While asking the AP government to bear the salaries of employees and maintenance of the Tribunal for November, the bench directed both the Chief Secretaries to meet and sort out the issue.