HYDERABAD: A division bench of the High Court asked the Southern Power Distribution Company of Telangana Ltd on Wednesday to explain under which provision of law it had amended the recruitment rules which make only the citizens of Telangana state eligible to get employment in TS Genco and TS Transco.
The bench, comprising acting chief justice Dilip B Bhosale and justice SV Bhatt, was dealing with a petition filed by Challa Narasimha Reddy and others challenging the amendments made by TS Genco, TS Transco, TSSPDCL and TSNPDCL.
These companies have given a notification for filling the posts of assistant executive engineers and the written tests are scheduled to be held from November 8.
Petitioners’ counsel K Lakshmi Narasimha submitted that in August the respondent companies had amended their Recruitment Rules and as per the new amendment, the entire Telangana state was divided into North Zone and South Zone. According to the new rule, any person who is either born or studied for more than six years in one of these zones is called a ‘Local Candidate’ in that zone and the ratio between the local and non-local is 70 pc and 30 pc, he pointed out. As such, he said, local candidates are entitled to 70 pc of the posts and the rest of the posts are to be filled by persons belonging to the other zone.
He contended that in terms of these rules no citizen of India can compete and all these posts are now sought to be reserved in favour of only Telangana-born persons, which was not permissible under the Constitution. “By these amendments, a new citizenship called ‘Citizens of Telangana’ was made which was unconstitutional, he said.
He said that as per Article 16(2) of the Constitution the power of reserving posts and determining the local status of a citizen is vested only in Parliament and not a company registered under the Companies Act. On the other hand, the counsel representing the power utilities said he would get instructions from the authorities and urged the bench to adjourn the case hearing.
The bench said that in the meantime all the petitioners should be permitted to write the examination and posted the matter to Friday for further hearing.