Telangana to seek review of verdict

Hyderabad: Shocked by the Supreme Court verdict on APSCHE, the TS government plans to file a review petition in the Apex Court in a day or two.

Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao held an emergency meeting with Chief Secretary Rajiv Sharma, advocate-general K. Ramakrishna Reddy and law secretary A. Santosh Reddy on Friday to take stock of the situation and explore the legal options available before the TS government.

The TS government had taken over the institutions and their bank accounts listed under Schedule X of AP Reorgnisation Act, most of which are located in Hyderabad, on the ground that they are located in its territory.

However, the SC made it clear that the assets and liabilities of these institutions should be shared between AP and TS in proportion to their population of 52:48.

The AP government has been arguing that these institutions were established investing common resources of both Seemandhra and Telangana over a period of time in the combined state and they should be divided between the two states like all other things were being done as per their population ratio.

There are 107 institutions listed under Schedule X, of which 97 are located in TS.The TS government, which was confident of securing huge assets and bank deposits of these institutions, will now have to satisfy itself with a share lower than that of AP, based on population.

Officials expect that the TS government would need to shell out huge sums to AP government to take possession of the assets of these institutions, including sharing of bank deposits worth thousands of crores of rupees. They expect the SC verdict to have an impact even on sharing of assets and liabilities of 89 institutions listed under Schedule IX of the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014.

With uncertainty looming large on these institutions, both the governments are vying with each other to take control of the bank accounts of these institutions and writing to banks against each other asking them not to honour the cheques issued by the other.

Several of these institutions hold huge assets like buildings, lands and bank deposits in city and sharing of them would fetch huge revenues for AP government which the TS government has been strongly opposing.