The meeting convened by the Union Home Ministry to resolve the pending bifurcation issues between Telangana and Andhra Pradesh has been postponed by two days.
The meeting through video-conference will now be held on June 17 instead of June 15. The Union Home Ministry had earlier called for the meeting on May 25 but deferred it in view of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Telangana and Tamil Nadu the same day. The meeting has been convened to discuss the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh Bhavan located in the national capital between the two States. Andhra Pradesh Government has submitted two proposals according to which, Telangana would get 8.41 acre of the close to 20-acre land and AP would get 11.32 acre in line with the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014 which divided the assets and liabilities on the basis of population ratio 58:42 between the two successor States.
The State Government is yet to submit its proposals on the bifurcation almost eight years since the formation of Telangana while the AP Government submitted its proposals in 2018. The State Government is firm that the property allotted to the State was in lieu of the Hyderabad House and was property of the Nizam. Hence, it solely belonged to Telangana.
The Centre, however, clarified that the asset should be divided between the two States and wanted Telangana to come up with alternative proposals if it was opposed to the proposals submitted by AP. Senior officials remained tight-lipped when asked to respond on the government’s stand on the issue as a stand in this regard should be taken at the highest level.
The agenda of the next meeting also has division of Schedule IX institutions, division of Singareni Collieries Company Limited and its subsidiary AP Heavy Machinery Engineering Limited and apportionment of institutions not mentioned in the AP Reorganisation Act 2014. Interestingly, the SCCL has again been included in the agenda in spite of repeated protests by Telangana Government that the public sector mining company belonged to the State as all its assets were located here.
