HYDERABAD: Senior counsel DV Seetharama Murthy, appearing for Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar, submitted to the Telangana High Court on Monday that the Centre had committed a series of mistakes while dividing All India Service (AIS) officers between Andhra Pradesh and Telangana states.
He contended that the Centre had violated AIS rules in the allocation of Somesh Kumar to Andhra Pradesh. The guidelines for distributing AIS officers should have been as mandated by the Centre but were not and on the contrary, a Committee headed by Pratyush Sinha with five members, framed the guidelines, which was later ratified by the Centre.
PK Mohanty, the then Chief Secretary of erstwhile Andhra Pradesh was one of the members of the Pratyush Sinha Committee, despite the fact that his daughter Swetha Mohanty and son-in-law Rajat Saini were also in the list of officers to be distributed between the two states. Under these circumstances, allowing Mohanty to continue as a member of the committee.
The bench comprising Justice Ujjal Bhuyan and Justice S Nanda questioned him how come Mohanty was not made a party in the plea if Somesh Kumar were so aggrieved on inclusion of Mohanty. The senior counsel replied, Mohanty was in service as on June 1, 2014, and he furnished a slew of GOs on the day itself. That is why Mohanty was not made a party to the plea.