YSR Congress party president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy’s historic decision to merge all the employees of the AP State Road Transport Corporation with the state government has landed the neighbouring Telangana government headed by K Chandrasekhar Rao in deep trouble.
The Jagan government has further enhanced the retirement age of employees of APSRTC, who are now be made employees of AP Public Transport Department, from 58 to 60 also generated a lot of goodwill for him.
As such, the RTC employees have turned employee friendly and there will no be no strike in the RTC hereafter, as they are all government employees now, enjoying all the benefits of the state government. If at all they have to go on strike, they would have to do so only when there is a general strike by employees.
Now, Jagan’s move created troubles for KCR, who is also under tremendous pressure from the Telangana State RTC employees demanding their merger with the state government.
They now have a genuine question: when it is possible in Andhra, why can’t it be done in Telangana?
Moreover, their own colleagues till five years ago, are now being treated as government employees with enhanced age limit of 60 years.
So, it was no surprise that the KCR government had to discuss this issue for over five hours during the cabinet meeting on Tuesday.
Finally, KCR has sought to put down the strike by constituting a committee with senior IAS Officers to examine the demands of RTC employees.
The committee comprising Somesh Kumar, special chief secretary, as chairman and Principal secretary Ramakrishna Rao and Principal secretary Sunil Sharma as members, will discuss with RTC employees and after thoroughly examining the demands will submit a report as early as possible to the government.
