The stalemate over the inter-State transfer of 74 doctors who opted for Telangana but were allocated to Andhra Pradesh as part of the bifurcation process appears to be heading for a resolution.
The first meeting of the committee constituted under the direction of the Supreme Court was held recently during which timelines have been fixed for completing the process within three months in accordance with the directives of the apex court. The committee is headed by Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) additional secretary Manoj Kumar Dwivedi as chairman and the Health Secretaries of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh S.A.M. Rizvi and M.T. Krishna Babu as members.
Mr. Dwivedi has favoured identification of a common agency for coordinating the exercise with the administrative departments on behalf of the committee and the General Administration (State Reorganisation) department had been chosen as the nodal agency for the purpose.
It was decided to issue circulars to the doctors for submission of representation to the nodal agency with March 10 being the last date. The representations would be compiled and forwarded to the administrative departments of the two States by March 15 and this would be followed by their examination and submission of recommendations by the two States to the nodal agency by April 5.
The nodal agency, the General Administration (SR) department would then forward the complete recommendations to the DoPT by April 10.
During the meeting, Mr. Krishna Babu informed the members that he has a list of 57 employees of which 21 joined in Andhra Pradesh and 30 employees were continuing their service in Telangana. Mr. Rizvi said the allocation of the employees including the petitioners was done strictly as per the guidelines issued by the advisory committee headed by C.R. Kamalanathan. He assured that he would cross check the list of 74 petitioners and identify those who joined A.P. in consultation with the General Administration department of the neighbouring State. The two senior officials opined that there was no need for receiving representations afresh as the employees submitted their papers to the advisory committee.
Mr. Dwivedi, however, said the special leave petitions were alive and the committee was mandated to consider the representations of individual appellants, including those who joined in Andhra Pradesh. The development follows the direction of the Supreme Court that the process should be completed within three months by May 6. The committee had resolved to hold negotiations again in the first week of March to fine tune the process if need be so that the deadline fixed by the apex court was met.
