The stalemate over the pending bifurcation issues between the two Telugu States — Telangana and Andhra Pradesh — continues as there is no movement on the pending issues almost two months after the meeting Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy had with his A.P. counterpart N. Chandrababu Naidu.
The two chief ministers met on July 6 and decided to constitute a committee of senior officials of both the States to amicably resolve the pending issues.
Accordingly, the Telangana government had announced constitution of committee headed by Chief Secretary A. Santhi Kumari with Special Chief Secretary K. Ramakrishna Rao and Principal Secretary in the CMO V. Seshadri as its members to hold negotiations with the A.P. government. The neighbouring State too had constituted a committee headed by its Chief Secretary Neerabh Kumar Prasad comprising Principal Secretary finance and Principal Secretary in the CMO as its members on August 1.
The high-power delegation was expected to hold discussions to sort out the issues at their level failing which they would be escalated to the committee of Ministers of the two States, but there has been no forward movement ever since. Interestingly, Deputy Chief Minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka made separate representations, predominantly on bifurcation related issues, seeking intervention of the Union government during his meeting with Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman last Saturday.
Apart from release of pending amounts under the backward regions grant fund, Mr. Bhatti Vikramarka requested the Union Finance Minister to intervene and resolve issues pertaining to power dues between the two States, reimbursement of excess liability allocated to Telangana Power Finance Corporation during bifurcation and pending dues of net credit carried forward of the Commercial Taxes department.
Senior officials said the date for the meeting of the officials’ committee has not been finalised yet as the decision should be taken at the level of the Chief Secretaries. “Hopefully, the Chief Secretaries of the two States will fix a schedule for starting discussions on the pending issues,” an official told The Hindu.
