Telugu States make little headway in resolving pending issues

Efforts initiated to iron out pending issues relating to State reorganisation between the successor Telugu States - Telangana and Andhra Pradesh - are making little headway thanks to the frequent postponement of meetings between the two Chief Secretaries.

A meeting of Telangana Chief Secretary S.K. Joshi and his A.P. counterpart Dinesh Kumar on Monday was postponed as the latter could not attend due to important engagements. This follows the cancellation of a similar meeting in March, when Mr. Joshi conveyed his inability to attend the meeting owing to budget related work.

There is no clarity about the date on which the meeting is expected to be held and top officials said the situation is no different with the meetings convened by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs relating to pending assurances made in the A.P. Reorganisation Act 2014. The adjournment of these meetings comes at a time when officials concerned had lined up important items as part of the agenda.

In Monday’s meeting, for instance, the A.P. government had planned to raise at least 12 issues including the bifurcation of Schedule IX and Schedule X institutions, including those with only cash and no fixed assets. The meeting was expected to discuss and sort out issues pertaining to tax apportionment and concurrence for exchange of employees of T.S. origin working in A.P. and vice-versa.

The Telangana government, on its part, wanted an agreement to be reached between the two States on the definition of “headquarters asset”, as well as treatment of property located in the headquarters when land was not in the name of the respective corporation. The State planned to impress upon A.P. the need to reach an agreement on giving first right of refusal to it at the time of disposal of property in the headquarters.

In addition to power and water dues of part of the secretariat complex that was handed over to A.P. and remittance of Telangana’s share of funds under different heads, the Telangana government wanted to insist upon A.P. to handover the secretariat and other office buildings. The issue of handing over part of the H block for accommodating the newly constituted TS State Finance Commission and handing over of the vacant government quarters in the pool of A.P. were among the major issues that find a mention in the agenda of the meeting of the two Chief Secretaries.