Hyderabad HC refuses to pass order on staff headquarters issue

HYDERABAD: Refusing to pass an order directing the state government employees to stay in headquarters where they were posted and be available to the people to address their issues, a division bench of the Hyderabad High Court has made it clear that it was for the Telangana government to take this issue into consideration and pass requisite directions to regulate due functioning of the executive.

The bench comprising Chief Justice TBN Radhakrishnan and Justice V Ramasubramanian was passing this order recently in a PIL case based on a letter addressed to the Chief Justice by Y Thippa Reddy, president of Atmakur Bar association in Wanaparthy, seeking directions to the state chief secretary to direct the officers to stay at headquarters and maintain time sense in their respective offices.

The petitioner advocate, in his letter, stated that the doctors in primary health centres, the tahsildars, mandal development officers, agriculture officers, school headmasters, engineers, veterinary doctors, sub-registrars and other mandal officers were not residing at the mandal headquarters, but were living at the district headquarters or nearby cities.

He said that these employees were attending to the offices daily by travelling about 50 to 100 kilometres and thereby getting tired and taking rest for one hour and as such, they were available to the public only after 12 noon and leaving the office before 4 pm.  When the matter came up for hearing, the bench reminded that the Rules were in place to deal with the issues raised by the petitioner. In fact, the matter in issue was entirely within the domain of governance,  the bench observed and disposed of the case.