Centre revives panel to share AP, TS assets

The Centre on Friday restored the Sheela Bhide committee on bifurcation of Schedule IX institutions. The committee's term had expired in August 2015.

The Centre had not extended the tenure then, leading to uncertainty over the fate of these 89 institutions, mostly located in Hyderabad. The assets of these institutions are worth nearly `50,000 crore.

However, the Union home ministry issued orders unexpectedly on Friday, extending the tenure till February 2017.

The fresh orders came as a shock to TS government since the Centre refused to extend the committee’s tenure since August last year. The Centre had left the bifurcation of these institutions to both the states to resolve all the issues through negotiations.

Interestingly, the committee, which was originally appointed for bifurcation of assets and liabilities, has been now given the responsibility of bifurcating the employees working in them, which TS is opposing.

The TS government claims that most of the staff working in these institutions are AP-native and allotment of such staff to TS would impose salary burden on it.

The TS government had earlier relieved AP-staff working in power department and stopped payment of salaries to the staff working in AP Dairy Development Corporation.

Both these moves had landed the TS government in legal troubles.

DC CORRESPONDENT HYDERABAD, SEPT. 16

Of the 108 institutions, the committee submitted demerger proposals for only 59 when its tenure expired in August 2015.

Even the bifurcation of these 59 institutions could not be completed due to dispute between TS and AP over sharing of assets and liabilities, besides employees.