Power firm directed to consider staff plea

By S A Ishaqui

Hyderabad, June 24: The Hyderabad High Court has directed the Telangana Southern Power Distribution Company Limited (TGSPDCL), formerly the Central Power Distribution Company Limited, to consider the plea of its employees to exercise their options in statutory terms and eventually the authorities shall consider their cases at the time of permanent allotment, without reference to their provisional allotment.

While disposing off a petition by the TGSPDCL employees, Justice Dama Seshadri Naidu made it clear that for the purpose of transition, if any employee was assigned any task provisionally either by way of transfer or deputation or in whatever other manner, it shall not be to his or her prejudice at the time of final allocation of the work force.

The petitioners challenged an order issued on May 31, 2014, provisionally allotting their services to the Southern Power Distribution Company of AP contending that their allocation was illegal and arbitrary, apart from being violative of the provisions of the AP Reorganisation Act of 2014.

G. Vidyasgar Rao, senior counsel for the petitioners, argued that according to Section 77 of the Act, on and from the Appointed Date the employees working in the posts situated within the territorial state of Telangana including those working in the state public sector corporation, shall continue to serve provisionally within the territorial limits of the said state.

He said that so far no guidelines have been issu-ed in terms of Section 82 of the Act to effect any allocation. The counsel for the respondent company said, in view of the bifurcation of the APCPDCL, owing territorial compulsions in the wake of the division of the erstwhile unified state, it was incumbent on the government to relocate some of the staff working in the corporate offices falling within the territory of the new state, for half of the company gets merged with another entity.

The judge observed: “The division of a state, or in other words, birth of a state, is neither a routine nor a mundane matter of the state affairs. Demar-cation of a territory may be straight forward, but the division of administrative machinery is rather complex.”