Telangana IAS Officer's association heading for a split

Hyderabad: The Telangana IAS Officer’s Association is all set to split. IAS officers belonging to SC, ST, BC and minority communities, who suspect discrimination in postings, have decided to form a separate association.

A group of IAS officers held a meeting recently and discussed several issues including the postings. According to sources, they feel that the Telangana IAS officers association is not coming to their rescue when the government is allotting all important posts to officers belonging to forward castes and assigning others to departments of lesser profiles. 

At the meeting, some IAS officers raised objections about the association's silence when the government demolished its old office. An IAS officer said, “We cannot meet the Chief Minister to express our grievances. The association is also not taking interest. The only option left with us is to form a separate association.”

For a few days now, these IAS officers are holding discussions on how to fight the discrimination against them.  They said some IAS officers were being forced to work like clerks. They said the government was ignoring IAS officers from Telangana and giving importance to outsiders, even by giving them postings where IAS officers are not necessary.

A senior IAS officer said, “The present situation of IAS officers is not good, but there is no option. The same situation existed in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar also, but they formed a separate association. When we held a meeting a few days ago, only 10 officers but on Monday, around 20 officers attended. This shows the extent of discrimination.”

Meanwhile, Telangana IAS Officers Association president and special chief secretary BP Acharya said association treated all members equally. Speaking to this newspaper, he said that there was no discrimination on the grounds of caste or any other factors. He said when a MLA misbehaved with the Mahabubabad collector Preeti Meena, who belongs to ST category, the association took up her case strongly with the government and a case was registered by the police.  

Regarding the postings, he said that it was not in the domain of the association. Meanwhile, two IAS officers, D. Amoy Kumar, deputy, secretary of education department and Arvinder Singh, joint secretary of general administration department said that they did not attend meeting.