SC upholds committee order on AP, TS power staff allocation

The Supreme Court has upheld the one-man Justice DM Dharmadhikari (Retd) committee order on the allocation of electricity employees among the Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.

A division bench of Justice J Ashok Bhushan and MR Shah on Monday dismissed a batch of the petitions of Telangana State Power Generation Corporation, some employees associations and employees of the power sector on the allocation of staff to the States of Andhra and Telangana.

Following the order, the Telangana power utilities — TSGenco, TSTransco and Discoms, have to accommodate 584 employees to whom Telangana has been paying salaries on the directions of the court for the past two years.

The apex court had appointed a committee under Justice Dharmadhikari to resolve issues related to electricity employees which had cropped up after bifurcation. This has been one of the problematic area for both the States. Following an order from the committee, the AP government refused to take 655 employees allotted to the state.

The power employees’ unions in Telangana had pleaded that the allocations of 584 additional employees was against the modalities fixed by the committee. They along with power utilities approached the SC seeking clarification, wherein the Court ordered that the allotment made by the committee was final.

It may be recalled that the Telangana power utilities had relieved 1,157 AP native employees in June 2015. Following this, some employees approached the High Court against the Telangana utilities as they were being paid salaries without allocating any work. The monthly payout was estimated to be about ₹15 crore.

The Dharmadhikari committee had allotted 655 employees to AP and 584 to Telangana in December 2019 and later 71 more employees were added in the supplementary list. The allocation was made in June 2020.

While the apex court observed that the committee had finalised after going through various issues relating to allocation and that there was no need to consider these petitions, the TS utilities have decided to abide by the decision.