VIJAYAWADA: Employees of power utilities, who hail from AP and have been relieved by the Telangana government, are now in a predicament with AP government refusing to take them stating there are no vacancies. Around 500 employees have come to Vijayawada with relieving orders, but they were not given joining orders by AP authorities, leaving them in a quandary.
With a lot of hopes, they arrived at Vidyut Souda on Monday, but by evening they were told that there is ‘no vacancy’ in AP and the officials refused to take their reporting orders and give the reason in writing. “We have no other go but to take legal recourse,” said members of JAC of power utilities employees relieved from Telangana. Most of them are worried about their future as in the current situation, they might not get their salaries.
Now that Telangana has driven them away citing rules, power utility employees, mostly in Assistant Engineer to Superintendent Engineer posts, came to Vidyut Souda at 10 am on Monday with a hope that they would at least get justice in Andhra Pradesh, “We hope that the officials here consider our situation and allow us to join duties and post us anywhere in the State. With Telangana literally throwing us out, we are on roads today,” a power utility employee told TNIE, before going to meet the officials in Vidyut Souda.
However, by evening it was made clear that no power utility employee relieved by the Telangana government will be taken into AP power sector rolls till further orders. “We met Joint Managing Director (JMD) of APTRANSCO and sought an appointment with CMD N Srikant, but the latter was not in the office,” A Venkateswara Rao, a member of JAC told TNIE. As a last step before taking legal recourse, they decided to reach out to Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, who had promised during his padayatra to resolve their problems and had even discussed the issue during a couple of meetings with his Telangana counterpart K Chandrasekhar Rao.
It should be noted that on Saturday, the AP power utilities had written a letter to their Telangana counterparts requesting that status quo be maintained in the issue of division of employees between both the States as certain clarifications from the Supreme Court on the allocations made by one-member Dharmadhikari Committee were awaited.
The AP power utilities also informed that they would not admit or give posting to any of the employees working in Telangana, as per the committee report, as there were no vacancies to accommodate them. In the letter, AP Energy Secretary Srikant Nagulapalli noted that the AP power utilities requested the committee to put its report in abeyance as it needs further clarification to be implemented in toto.
Explaining their situation, Venkateswara Rao said in June 2014, 1,157 employees, who are native of AP and working with GENCO, TRANSCO, TSNPDCL and TSSPDCL, were arbitrarily relieved by the Telangana government. “We approached the High Court and it directed the Telangana government to continue our services, but the latter did not pay heed to the order. However, on the court’s directions, our salaries were paid by both AP and TS in 58:42 ratio and we continued on rolls of Telangana without any work.
The AP government went to Supreme Court in December 2015 questioning the payment of only 52 per cent of salary and subsequently, the court directed Telangana to pay the entire salary. Though they paid the entire salary, we were not given promotions, increment and special grade increments,” he explained.Later for the bifurcation of the power utility employees between the two States, the one-man Justice Dharmadhikari Committee was constituted, which gave its verdict on December 26 allocating 655 to Andhra Pradesh and the same was challenged by the AP power utilities in the Supreme Court.