Hyderabad: Fretting about the plight of the people with a large part of public transportation being unused because of the RTC workers’ strike for last 24 days, the Telangana High Court on Monday instructed the state government, RTC management and unions to not spend time nitpi-cking at a time of crisis.
A division bench of the High Court, comprising Chief Justice Raghave-ndra Singh Chauhan and Justice Annireddy Abhishek Reddy, while dealing with PILs on the RTC strike, asked what prevented the state government from being generous enough to grant some amount to rescue RTC now.
Advising that urgent efforts should be made to rebuild trust between workers and corporation, even if problems might not get resolved overnight, the Bench said that both sides should remember hurdles facing by poor people because of the strike.
The Bench, while perusing through a report submitted by the RTC management on financial implications of negotiations with worker unions held on October 26, felt the corporation and government were pre-conceived and pre-determined to find the demands non-feasible to implement.
On October18, the High Court directed the state government and RTC to start negotiations on 21 demands with worker unions, which the court believed, would not impose much financial burden on the corporation. The court had also directed the RTC to submit a report about the discussions. As directed, the RTC in-charge managing director submitted a report.
The report claims that out of 21, only two demands were feasible to implement. Another 16 could not be implemented as the corporation has less than Rs 10 crore. Two were new demands and not feasible as they would require huge funds. Another demand could not be implemented due to provisions of the Road Transportation Act. The report also argued that four particular demands might impose a burden of more than Rs 46.62 crore on the corporation.
The Bench sternly admonished the RTC officials, saying it was typical bureaucratic attitude to not detail financial implication in numbers and simply resort to rhetoric of 16 demands “cannot be implemented.”
“Your report reflects you have a closed mind. If you enter negotiations with a pre-conceived stance that no demands would be considered because the corporation has no funds, how would the crisis get resolved?” the Bench asked. J. Ramachandra Rao, additional advocate general (AAG), argued that the data and report were made by the corporation to discuss with unions. However, the unions left the negotiations by being adamant on merger of corporation, he submitted.
Don’t tell us about our power, CJ upbraids AAG Chief Justice Chauhan sternly upbraided the AAG during the arguments.
When the Bench suggested that the state government should consider an additional budget for the RTC, observing that corporations should be aided as exigencies rose, Ramachandra Rao said that it was not permissible under Article 226.
Sharply reacting to comments by AAG Rao, Chief Justice Chuahan said, “Don’t tell us our power under Article 226. Courts have jurisdictional power to interfere and sky is the limit for courts.”
Then Justice Chauhan summoned B.S. Prasad, advocate general, who was not present in the court hall. When AG rushed to the court after being ushered, the CJ asked him why was the government not in position to help the RTC.
D. Prakash Reddy, senior counsel representing trade unions, informed the Court that the corporation and state government were blaming workers for losses to RTC without disclosing facts about not releasing reimbursement of bus passes amount to extent of `2,475 crore. The GHMC owed the RTC an amount of Rs 1,492 crore.
“The RTC has no power to hike bus tickets. It cannot decide on which routes buses should be run. All this is done by the government. But when losses occur and mount, the government blames employees,” he submitted.
Mr Reddy expressed sadness that the government had misinterpreted his arguments during the previous hearing. While he had submitted that all demands should be discussed, but the demand for merger was a pre-requisite, the government had twisted it to say that unions had given up the merger demand.
