Employees can pick states, says Hyderabad High Court

Hyderabad: The Hyderabad High Court has ruled that irrespective of whether persons working in different zones in undivided AP were rightly appointed in terms of the Presidential Order or not, once the state stood bifurcated, the state-wise cadre employees of both the newly-formed states had the option to seek allocation to one or the other state as per the provisions of the Act of 2014.

A division bench comprising Justice P.V. Sanjay Kumar and Justice N. Balayogi was allowing two petitions by Ahmed Abdul Samee and another, both engineers of the panchayat raj department challenging an order of the AP Administrative Tribunal in setting aside their repatriation from Kurnool to Telangana in 2007 while implementing GO 610 that was intended to repatriate employees working in excess in Telangana and send them back to their native zones.During division of employees between states of AP and TS after bifurcation, the two had opted for TS. Accordingly, they were allocated to TS by the Centre.

Aggrieved by their allocation, some engineers moved applications before the tribunal which set aside their allocation.The bench noted that the petitioners, who were appointed the assistant engineers, were later promoted as executive engineers that are state cadre posts. The petitioners are also senior to the applicants before the tribunal. While upholding their allocation to TS by the Centre, the bench found fault with the tribunal for not looking into the aspects under which circumstances they were allocated to TS. The bench set aside the tribunal order