National

Shade Of Xenophobia

TRS renders Seemandhra employees aliens

Advertisement

Shade Of Xenophobia
info_icon

Seemandhra employees working in various state departments in Telangana watch with trepidation the sword dangling menacingly over their heads these days. Especially as the Telangana Rashtra Samiti gover­n­ment goes about collecting information on them through a staffed ‘war room’.There is no question of allowing emp­loyees from Rayalaseema and Andhra to continue to work in the wings of the secretariat, chief minister K. Chandra­sekhara Rao, or KCR as he is popularly known, had said in very his first speech at a gathering of Telangana employees. “We will not allow Seemandhra employees to step into the T-Secretariat even if they are forcefully allocated to Telangana state,” he had said.

Advertisement

The issue blew up when P.K. Mohanty, the outgoing chief secretary of undivided Andhra Pradesh, explained the guidelines for the provisional allocation of posts between the two states. According to these, most posts would continue on an “as is, where is” basis till the central government makes a final allocation. This was unacceptable to the TRS, and KCR immediately rushed to governor E.S.L. Narsimhan to register his protest.

Various estimates are cropping up with regard to the number of non-Telangana employees in Hyderabad. While KCR’s son and TRS MLA K.T. Rama Rao puts their number at a few hundreds, Telan­gana Non-Gazetted Officers president G. Devi Prasad Rao estimates that 10,000-12,000 Seemandhra employees work in the offices of state heads of departments and 74 wings of the secretariat.

Advertisement

“As per the preliminary estimates of the C.R. Kamalnathan Committee gui­delines, there are 56,000 state employees to be allocated in a 58% (AP)-42% (Telangana) rule,” he says. “However, one needs to remember that the allotted strength is 76,000 and there are 20,000 vacancies. So if the 58%-42% split is done only for 56,000, akin to the Duckworth-Lewis method, Telangana employees stand to lose.” For example, the Board of Intermediate Education has seven non-gazetted officers, five from Telangana, two from Seemandhra. If the 58-42 percentage rule is implemented, then four posts will go to Seemandhra and three to Telangana.

Besides, says Prasad, many wings have a larger number of employees from Seemandhra. “In the Regional Transport Authority office, for instance, there are 140 officers. Of these, only 30 belong to Telangana,” he says. Members of the TNGO and Telangana Joint Action Com­mittee chief M. Kodanda Ram have alr­eady begun staging dharnas in protest.

At the other end, AP chief minister elect Nara Chandrababu Naidu says he cannot understand the need for a war room. “Isn’t this time for a peace room,” he asks. He also cannot see why a wedge should be driven between emp­loyees when the allocation is being done by the central government. “Being a chief minister,” he says of KCR, “he should not make provocative comments which raise passions and can create law and order problems.”

Andhra Pradesh Non-Gazetted Offi­cers (APNGO) president Ashok Babu echoes this somewhat. “Isn’t it time he started speaking like a chief minister and not an agitationist? Wasn’t he the one who said that it is regions which split, not people? That we should part as brothers. What part of his statements sounds brotherly?”

Advertisement

Taking a more practical view, Prasad says Seemandhra employees should continue working in Hyderabad only if one’s spouse is from Telangana, or the employee has just two years to go before retirement, or the person has a physical disability or any serious health issue.

Meanwhile, as a Seemandhra emp­loyee in the electricity board put it, “It’s our offices which have turned battlefields where regional divisions have come out in the open even as our CM sets up war rooms.”

Tags

    Advertisement

    Advertisement

    Advertisement

    Advertisement

    Advertisement

    Advertisement