Bifurcation of AP: Centre to determine criteria for division of employees

The issue of contract employees and of those working on an outsourcing basis in the govt is also expected to throw a challenge to officials

The division of government employees between Telangana and the residuary state of Andhra Pradesh by the appointed date on June 2, 2014, will be taken up only after the criteria for determining local, non-local status of the staff concerned is indicated by the Centre, a senior government official said here today.

"According to the existing practice, the place of study is considered for deciding the local or non-local status of a person for a government job. But there has been a demand that the place of birth of a person should be the criteria. It is for the Centre to decide as to what criteria to follow in this regard," the official said.

According to the official, the Government of India will be issuing a detailed set of guidelines for the division of employees between the two states apart from constituting an advisory committee to oversee the process.

Union Home Secretary Anil Goswamy, who held a review meeting with state chief secretary P K Mohanty and the committees working on various aspects of the bifurcation on Tuesday, has understandably told them to adopt a humanitarian approach in dealing with sensitive aspects such as this.

Some 56,000 state-level cadre out of the total 756,000 regular government employees will have to be divided between the two states while the remaining local, zonal and multi-zonal cadre will be retained at their existing places by the successor states. These include the staff working in the state secretariat and various heads of departments, according to the officials.

The issue of contract employees and of those working on an outsourcing basis in the government is also expected to throw a challenge to officials. For now, the officers have confined to the division of the regular government staff leaving the issue of contract staff to the decision of the governor.

"There are 60,000 people working on a contract basis as against the sanction of only 30,000 posts by the finance department. We came to know that the remaining people are being paid from the reimbursement money given towards electricity charges among other miscellaneous accounts," an official said.

The question of whether to retain or remove the contract workers post bifurcation had already generated enough heat with the students of Osmania University burning the effigy of TRS president K Chandrasekhara Rao for promising to regularise the services of contract employees in government and public-sector undertakings. The students feel they will not be able to get enough government jobs if the future government seeks to retain the services of the contract employees.

It may be recalled that about 19 committees had been constituted by the chief secretary to undertake the bifurcation exercise related to various areas, including finances and other assets of the combined state, by the end of April, 2014, well ahead of the appointed date.