HYDERABAD: The central government has told the Hyderabad High Court that the Andhra Pradesh Administrative Tribunal (APAT) will have the territorial jurisdiction over both the successor states of AP and Telangana for a period of two years from the appointed day i.e. June 2, 2014.
In this regard it filed a counter affidavit before a division bench which is dealing with petitions questioning the jurisdiction of the APAT with regard to service matters of employees of Telangana government after bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh state.
The bench, comprising chief justice KJ Sengupta and justice PV Sanjay Kumar, is hearing petitions filed by superintending engineer B Laxmaiah and officer R Sri Ramulu of the R&B department, contending that APAT cannot adjudicate the service matters of employees of Telangana government after bifurcation of AP. They said the tribunal had no existence after the two new states came into existence.
The central government, in its counter affidavit, submitted that pursuant to enactment of the AP Reorganization Act, 2014 the matter regarding territorial jurisdiction of APAT over the successor states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, has been crystallised in consultation with the department of legal affairs taking into consideration the provision of Section 101 of the Act.
It said that the legal affairs department opined that “the AP administrative tribunal will have the territorial jurisdiction over both the successor states of AP and Telangana for a period of two years from the appointed day i.e. June 2, 2014.”
As for the demand for setting up a joint administrative tribunal for the successor states or separate administrative tribunal for the state of Telangana, it said that the successor states, by mutual agreement, may request the central government for issuing notification for having JAT or the Telangana state may request the Centre for setting up a separate tribunal.
The bench has recently made it clear that the APAT will deal with the service matters of public servants belonging to Andhra Pradesh and Telangana states till further orders. Accordingly, it ordered status quo till further orders.