HC to hear views of Telangana, Centre on apportionment of assets

​Hyderabad: A division bench of the High Court at Hyderabad comprising of Justice Ramesh Ranganathan and Justice U Durga Prasad Rao made it clear on Monday that it needed to hear the views of Telangana State and Union governments on the demerger and apportionment of assets, liabilities, besides distribution of employees of government-run Corporations and Cooperative Societies between the two states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh before passing any orders.

The bench was hearing a batch of writ petitions filed by employees of government-run Corporations and Societies seeking direction to Andhra Pradesh government to allow them to continue in service till attaining the age of 60 years on a par with the government employees of the State.

They challenged the orders of the AP government fixing their retirement age at 58 years. However, Telangana and Union governments were not made party in the petitions that came up for hearing before the bench on Monday.

The bench suggested to the counsels of the parties that the two Telugu State governments be included as parties. Employees of AP Civil Supplies Corporation Ltd, AP Irrigation Development Corporation Ltd, AP Housing Development Corporation Ltd, APIIC, etc. knocked on the doors of the High Court, saying that the government orders were violative of the provisions of AP Public Employment (Regulation of Age of Superannuation) (Amendment) Act 2014.

Andhra Pradesh Advocate General Dammalapati Srinivas informed the court that the exercise of demerger and apportionment of assets, liabilities and distribution of employees has not been undertaken in most of these Corporations and the Andhra Pradesh government is yet to take a call on whether to continue these entities as Corporations or Societies or take them under the government.

He found fault with the petitioners for rushing to the court, alleging inaction on the part of the government while it had no legislative competence to override the provisions of AP Reorganisation Act 2014. Most of these entities are in Ninth and Tenth Schedule of the Act and therefore the government is hesitating to act in this matter. Justice Ranganathan questioned the AG whether the government was contemplating a move to make these employees government servants if it would not intend to continue these entities.

He also said since the Telangana State government had already formed its own Corporations/Societies, employees in the AP region would be deemed to continue their services for AP Corporations.

Counsels for the petitioners countered the arguments of Advocate General, saying that it had raised the superannuation age to 60 years for government employees even as the apportionment process was continuing and differences between the two governments over the issue was persisting.

The counsel for AP Public Sector Employees Federation said when the government had no difficulty in the case of its employees, how can it take shelter behind AP Reorganisation Act provisions to deny the benefit to the employees of Corporations/Societies.

The Federation had challenged the G.O. MS No. 112 issued by the AP government on June 18 this year whereby it had made it clear that the issue of superannuation age would be dealt with only after completing process of demerger and apportionment of assets, liabilities and distribution of employees. The arguments would continue on Tuesday also.