Government Scraps Proposal To Downgrade Hyderabad GPO
Hyderabad General Post Office will retain its existing status after the postal department dropped plans to downgrade it from Group A to Group B, bringing relief to employees and postal unions.
The proposal to downgrade Hyderabad General Post Office (GPO) has been scrapped, bringing relief to postal unions that opposed the move. Chief Postmaster General of Telangana D.S.V.R. Murthy told Deccan Chronicle on Monday, “As of now there is no proposal of downgrading the GPO, Hyderabad.”
News of the proposal surfaced on September 26 when AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi wrote to the Union ministry of communications urging it to drop the plan. The proposal sought to downgrade the GPO from Group ‘A’ to ‘B’. Several postal unions opposed it and approached MP Raghunandan with representations.
Murthy explained that the department had initially planned to upgrade Sangareddy postal division into a senior postal division by placing the time‑scale officer of GPO Hyderabad there, without new appointments.
Unions said the decision was good news for 150 clerical staff, 80 postmen and around 30 class‑IV employees. “We are thankful to the department for dropping the proposal,” they said.
Hyderabad Philatelic and Hobbies Society secretary Sagi Srinivas Raju also welcomed the decision.
The Hyderabad GPO building was inaugurated on August 20, 1966 by Satyanarayan Sinha, then minister for communications and parliamentary affairs. In 2016 it celebrated its golden jubilee. On August 8, 1985 it was modernised as a General Post Office and dedicated to the public by then Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N.T. Rama Rao.
Recent statistics show Telangana Circle has 36 head post offices, 759 sub post offices and 5,424 branch post offices, supported by 6,514 departmental employees and 10,623 Gramin Dak Sevaks (GDS). Across 17 Rozgar Mela tranches, the department issued 1,86,202 appointment offers, including 1,51,348 to GDS. In Telangana Circle, 1,272 candidates, including 1,123 GDS, received offers.
