The Telangana High Court, today, refused to intervene in the orders issued by the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) and instructed IAS officers from the Andhra Pradesh cadre to report for duty in the state as mandated by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT).
The court was addressing petitions filed by four IAS officers who sought to delay their reassignment until November 4, when their petitions will be heard by the CAT. The High Court informed the officers that if it did not grant a stay, the issue would remain unresolved indefinitely. The officers— IAS Ronald Rose (2006 batch), IAS Vani Prasad (1989 batch), IAS Amrapali Kata (2010 batch), and IAS Karuna Vakati (2004 batch) — were ordered to join their posts in Andhra Pradesh as directed by the CAT following the DoPT’s orders from the previous week.
The CAT’s Hyderabad bench denied any relief to the officers, instructing them to comply with the DoPT’s directive to join their duties in Andhra Pradesh. On October 10th, the DoPT relieved five IAS officials (including one serving in Andhra Pradesh) from their current roles and ordered them to report back to their respective state cadres by October 16th.
The CAT mandated the officers to comply with the DoPT’s orders until further notice. The petitioners contended that the DoPT did not consider recommendations from a one-member committee, claiming that the approach taken by the Pratyush Sinha Committee—responsible for dividing the cadres between the two Telugu states—was flawed. They also argued that their ten years of experience had been overlooked.
In response, the CAT instructed the DoPT to provide a detailed report by the first week of November, addressing the grievances raised by the officers. Recently, the DoPT rejected requests from eight All India Service (AIS) officers—five from the IAS and three from the Indian Police Service (IPS)—for reallocation to the Telangana cadre.
These officers were reassigned to the Andhra Pradesh cadre following the bifurcation of the state in 2014 but challenged this decision, seeking allocation to the Telangana cadre. The DoPT made its decision based on a recommendation from a committee led by former DoPT Secretary Deepak Khandekar, which was set up to reconsider the final allocation of the AIS officers.
After the bifurcation of united Andhra Pradesh into the separate states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana in 2014, the Union government reallocated IAS and IPS officers from the undivided state to the residuary state of Andhra Pradesh and the newly formed Telangana. Some officers contested their reassignment and appealed to the CAT, which ruled in their favour. The DoPT subsequently appealed the CAT’s decision in the High Court.
In its January 3rd, 2024, ruling, the Telangana High Court stated that the cases of the AIS officers should be reviewed for final allocation based on the guidelines established from the Pratyush Sinha Committee’s recommendations. Following this ruling, the DoPT established the Khandekar committee in March 2024 to reconsider the final allocation of these officers.
