Andhra Pradesh bifurcation: Government completes division of physical assets

With forty-eight hours left for bifurcation of Telangana as the 29th state of the Indian union, the division of physical assets has been completed. The AP government on Friday made provisional allocation of several buildings which would house the legislative assembly, legislative council, secretariat to the two successor states.

According to a government order issued by the chief secretary, PK Mohanty, the new assembly building would go to Telangana, while Seemandhra would get the old assembly building.

The existing Legislative Council building has been given for Andhra Pradesh and the abutting Jubilee Hall to Telangana.

The existing chief minister's camp office-cum-residence building at Begumpet, built during late Y S Rajasekhara Reddy regime, would go to Telangana.

The sprawling Lake View guest house on Raj Bhavan Road, built during the Nizam era, has been made Andhra Pradesh chief minister's camp office-cum-residence.

June 2 is the 'Appointed Day' when Telangana and residuary Andhra Pradesh would come into existence as separate states.

On and from the appointed day, Hyderabad (the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation area) would be the common capital for both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh for a period of 10 years.

The existing buildings in the Andhra Pradesh secretariat have also been provisionally allotted to conduct the administration of the two successor states.

Accordingly, the A, B, C, D blocks in the secretariat have been given to Telangana and the L, J, North-H, South-H and K blocks to the Andhra Pradesh.

The office of the undivided Andhra Pradesh chief minister has been located in the 'C' Block.

The chief secretary has also issued orders for separation of employees between Telangana and Seemandhra and about 9,000 Seemandhra employees will be ordered to serve temporarily in Telangana till the government of India finalised the bifurcation as per the Act passed in parliament. The government websites will also be divided between both the Telangana and Seemandhra governments. ' Eleven lakh state government employees and 70 lakh pensioners were paid their salary and pension for the month of May and one day in June in the last week of May to provide a burden-free financial environment for both the emerging states.

Both the governments now carry a total public debt burden of Rs 1.79 lakh crore which has to be divided on the basis of population of both states at 42: 58 ratio (Telangana: AP) and AP population is pegged at 8.49 crore. The proposals for division of infrastructure in health, education, industry, power sector, irrigation, urban and rural transport systems, treasuries and services of contract and outsourced employees are all pending final signal from the PMO.

Meanwhile, prime minister Narendra Modi has summoned all the Telangana files from the union home ministry for a full-length scrutiny before acting on the finances and employee separation procedures.