Criteria For Allocating Officers Skewed In Favour Of Telangana: IYR

The second chapter of the book discusses the process of assigning All India Service officers to Telangana and Andhra Pradesh and the recommendations of the Pratyush Sinha Committee. The author highlights many of the difficulties faced at that time and the criteria which were applied.

2. Pratyush Sinha Committee and Division of All-India Service Officers

The process of allocation of all-India service officers to the two states started much before June 2 with the formation of the Pratyush Sinha committee. The then chief secretary Mr PK Mohanty, Mr Rajiv Sharma representing the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India dealing with the division of the state, and a representative from the Department of Personnel were members of the committee. Broadly the basis for division of the officers and the criteria to be followed were decided even before the bifurcation of the state. The criteria evolved for the division of the all-India service officers was skewed in favour of Telangana. The division of officers was to take place based upon the ratio of districts in the two states, 13 :10 for Andhra Pradesh and Telangana respectively. Actually more all India service officers work in the State secretariat and heads of department offices than in the districts. Hence the ratio of districts as the criterion for division of officers is not the best. A different and more rational criterion should have been evolved. The population ratio of 58:42 relied upon for dividing a number of other items should have been a much better criterion for division of the all-India service officers in the absence of any other suitable and agreeable formula. In any case the ratio of districts was not the best formula. There was nothing much I could do at that point of time since the criteria were already decided and the Pratyush Sinha committee already had three to four sittings and broadly evolved a set of parameters to be followed while allotting individual officers to the states. While deciding the allocation of individual officers precedents of Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand were taken into consideration. Officers are divided into three categories. The direct recruit officers who are native to the undivided state of Andhra Pradesh, the promotee officers who are also native to the undivided state of Andhra Pradesh, and the officers from outside the state in terms of nativity but at the time of recruitment allotted to the Andhra Pradesh cadre by Government of India and hence belonging to AP cadre. The allocation of officers is quite a complex formula balancing the cadre in terms of seniority and reservation for both the states. First, the number of posts are divided between both the states in terms of the 13:10 formula already decided. This is done level-wise in all the three services of IAS IPS and IFS. For example, the category of special chief secretary, principal secretaries and down the line are divided in a similar manner. Then the number of posts allocated to each state based on 13:10 formula for category is again broken down into ratio between direct recruit insiders, direct recruit outsiders and promotee insiders. Within this category, again the reservation principal for SC, ST and BC categories is built-in. Where this results in the number of posts available for allocation being less than one for any one of these categories, it is rounded up to one and proportionately adjusted in another level of scale. When cadres were divided in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand the nativity principle was applied to the direct recruit insiders and for the promotee insiders and the “outsider” officers (I am using this word to describe the officers of all-India services not native to the state for want of a better word), the roster system was applied. In view of the bitterness already generated in the process of division of thestate the insider promotee officers also wanted the criterion of nativity taken for their allocation since they would prefer to work within the state to which they belong. This issue was taken up by the Governor with Government of India during the period of Governor’s rule and Government of India has agreed for applying the principle to the promotee officers as well. But still the point remains if in a particular category the number of posts are less and the officers based on nativity in that particular category are more, the excess starting from the junior-most within that category will be reallocated to the other state so that the proportion of the posts divided remains the same for both the states.

For the division of the officers who are not native to the undivided state of Andhra Pradesh (termed commonly as outsider officers) the roster system is followed for allocation. Lottery is drawn to decide to which state the senior-most officer would go and then the others are allocated as per the already drawn roster to ensure that officers get divided between both the states in proportion to their seniority so that both the states get officers at different levels of seniority as per the already decided ratio of 13:10. Of course in every category the quota system of reservation at different levels of seniority is scrupulously followed. There was not much of a problem in allocating the insider officers. Certain records in terms of their nativity and place of study were relied upon to determine nativity and allocation was done. Wherever the number allocated exceeded the number of posts they were reallocated to the other state. Those who were very keen to stay in a particular state approached courts of law and obtained stay and stayed on in the state of their choice. But allocation of the outsider officers proved a little tricky. First of all most of them preferred to stay back in Hyderabad and to that extent preferred Telangana cadre. Further the process of allocation of outside officers got into certain issues which complicated the matter. The controversy started from the day lottery for allocation of outside officers was taken. In the second or third meeting of the Pratyush Sinha committee attended by me, the lottery for allocating the outside officers was taken. In the lottery the name Telangana came and hence it was presumed the first seniormost officer would go to Telangana and allocation of others would be based on the roster starting with Telangana. Since the roster sheets were already available with officers they started fitting in the officers in the rosters to know to which state they would be going as per the roster starting with Telangana. If the same were to be followed Mr Rajiv Sharma would have landed in Andhra Pradesh cadre.

In the next meeting it was made known that if Telangana comes in the lottery the roster starts from Andhra Pradesh. The precedents of Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand were quoted and minutes of the earlier meetings were shown to substantiate the same. Without knowing this, a number of officers made their own calculations and mentally decided that they would be going to a particular cadre and were disappointed with this clarification. The actual allocation was exactly contrary to the calculations they made.

Another important issue that complicated the division of outside officers was whether Mr PK Mohanty should be counted in or out while making the allocation of officers. He was holding the charge till evening of 1st June and handed over the charge to me then. If he is counted in, then Mr Rajiv Sharma, Chief Secretary of Telangana, will have to go to Andhra Pradesh as per the roster and if Mr Mohanty is counted out he stays with Telangana. Mr Pratyush Sinha decided not to count Mr Mohanty in. This led to a lot of resentment among a number of outside officers who felt there are strong legal grounds to count him in. All those whose calculations of the roster were upset because of this decision felt unhappy about it. They felt on such an important legal matter the Department of Personnel should have at least taken the Attorney General’s opinion. I also felt that Mr Pratyush Sinha was not fair in some of these issues. In the committee generally Mr Pratyush Sinha and Mr Rajiv Sharma used to take a common view on a number of issues and I used to have a different point of view. There were heated discussions but the end result was one-sided as both of them used to vote me out on these issues. Another contentious issue was how the spouse of all-India service officer who is also in the service should be treated after he or she changes cadre after marriage. As per the rules in vogue when the spouse changes cadre on marriage he or she takes the last position in that batch in that state. The original list was prepared taking the seniority as it was after they changed the cadre consequent on marriage. But later Mr Pratyush Sinha wanted to change this taking into consideration the original seniority in the IAS combined list before they changed the cadre consequent on marriage.

This would change the roster completely. I was aware that this was being done to accommodate the cadre preferences of some officers. I strongly objected to the same in the committee meeting. I further reminded Mr Pratyush Sinha that if he insists on this we may have to reconsider the issue of counting PK Mohanty in and redrawing the roster. He did not take kindly to my objections which resulted in a heated argument. Again I was voted out 2 to 1 as Mr Sinha and Mr Sharma were together on the issue. I insisted and recorded my dissent note on the issue which further infuriated him. Overall the criteria for the allocation of all-India service officers was skewed in favour of Telangana. The ratio of 13:10 applied for dividing the cadre officers is based upon the number of districts and this is not the correct ratio for dividing officers as explained above. Since the criteria were decided even before the division of the state there was nothing much I could do about it. In the division of the outside officers also rules were tweaked to accommodate the preferences of some officers. Since most of the outside officers preferred to stay back in Hyderabad they were able to influence the decision-making process as well as approach courts of law for favourable orders to stay back in the Telangana cadre. The fact that Mr Rajiv Sharma worked at the Centre and handled the state division process also Helped.

The Central Administrative Tribunal in its orders at a later date found fault with the manner in which the Pratyush Sinha committee made the allocation of officers. But by then most of the officers got settled in their cadres, most of them as per their preferences. Time itself sorted out the remaining cadre allocation issues with officers getting reconciled to the cadres they are allotted even if it was not as per their original preference.

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