Nearly 100 Telangana State Information Commission staffers not paid salary for Febuary

HYDERABAD: Bifurcation blues have come back to haunt the staffers working at the State Information Commission in Hyderabad. Nearly 100 outsourced employees, who are yet to be r e-assigned to the two States and are presently working out of Telangana State Information Commission in city, have not been paid salaries for the month of February. This comes after the Telangana government decided to do away with the practice of paying the entire salary for the outsourced staff as was the case till February.

The TS government used to pay the salaries and seek reimbursement from AP government on the basis of 42:58 ratio as decided in the AP Reorganisation Act. It may be recalled that after a few persons approached the Hyderabad High Court earlier, the HC directed that all the staff would continue in their present positions till bifurcation process was complete and till then, the expenditures were to be shared by both the state governments. 

Officials here said that the matter is being pursued with AP government in order to reach an amicable solution as directed by the HC. Telangana government had constituted its State Information Commission in September 2017 whereas AP is yet to. The petitions pending before erstwhile State Commission are yet to be handed over to AP. “We have sorted out the files and kept them ready for AP to take them whenever they want. The existing staff who are contractual, outsourced or on deputation will continue till staff reorganisation whenever that happen,” said a senior official at TS Information Commission, adding that “we are hopeful of both the governments coming to a solution regarding this”. 

Erstwhile AP Information Commission, an institution listed under Schedule 10 of the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014, with 11 State Information Commissioners posts, continued to function with five SICs till it became completely defunct in May 2017. In September 2017, TS constituted its own State Information Commission with former Legislature Secretary S Raja Sadaram and senior journalist Buddha Murali as Chief Information Commissioner and State Information Commissioner respectively. AP government too, in August 2017, had issued an order for constitution of its own SIC, but no commissioner has been appointed. TSIC inherited 6,500 of nearly 15,000 pending cases.