Andhra Pradesh bifurcated with plethora of unfinished business

At the stroke of midnight, the state of Andhra Pradesh was officially divided into Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, but with a plethora of unfinished business staring at the new born states.

Even as the officials tried to split assets, liabilities, staff, loans, revenue, taxes ,power and water by June 1, none of these issues stand finalized leaving the tough task to the two chief ministers who don’t see eye to eye.

As anticipated, a major row has broken out over the ordinance on merging the 211 submerging villages of Khammam district of Telangana to Andhra Pradesh to facilitate construction of the Indira Sagar (Polavaram) project linking Godavari with Krishna River.

Transfer of these tribal villages has racked up emotions in the Telangana region fuelled by political overtures by the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) and even the Congress who in first place supported national status to the Polavaram project. The TRS is planning to move the Supreme Court on the issue.

CPM MLA Sunnam Rajaiah’s fast unto death mission in Bhadrachalam reached third day while the rest of the Telangana state celebrated statehood. However, the residual Andhra Pradesh welcomed the ordinance as merging of these villages will speed up land acquisition to complete the project aimed at proving drinking and irrigation water to the East and West Godavari and Krishna districts. Other than irrigating 7.20 lakh acres, Polavaram will also generate 960 mw power.

Another daunting issue that requires immediate attention is the distribution of government employees between the two states.

With the Telangana employees refusing to work with the Andhra Pradesh government even for one day, a temporary solution was found under which only 9,983 state-cadre employees will be asked to serve the Telangana state.

The department of personnel and training has asked the employees to report for duty from Monday if they want their salaries.

The order to serve will be handed over to the employees by Monday. Contrary to the argument of the Telangana employees, only 67 Seemandhra employees are in excess of the requirement where as there 600 Telangana employees are in excess.

The combined Andhra Pradesh has 12.5 lakh government employees, in which 65,000 are state cadre posts. The Central government has the authority to make alterations in the allocation within one year after the appointed day.

Similarly the issue of payment of pensions to pensioners who worked and retired in United Andhra Pradesh has been a bone of contention between the two states.

While Telangana employees unions argue that many of the Seemandhra employees claimed domicile in Telangana by submitting fake birth certificates.