Hyderabad: In a setback to the Telangana government, the High Court on Friday stayed the decision of the cabinet to privatize 5,100 bus routes in the state.
Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao had announced the privatisation of bus routes amid the State Road Transport Corporation employees’ indefinite strike which has been going on for over a month now. The court’s stay order comes at a time when the protesting bus employees refused to call off the strike despite government’s November 5 deadline.
The court pulled up the concerned officials for not being able to produce state cabinet's decisions after it asked them to submit the cabinet decisions pertaining to the privatisation of bus routes.
The court has posted the case to November 11 and instructed the government to not implement the cabinet decisions.
On the petition filed by PL Vishweshwar Rao, the court has sought details of the cabinet decisions pertaining to offer RTC routes to private operators.
In the court, the Assistant Solicitor General BS Prasad said that the Centre did not recognize the TSRTC formation by the state government. The centre is yet to bifurcate the Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation and the state government did not seek its permission for privatizing the bus routes.
Meanwhile, the Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari said that the Centre did not recognise the TSRTC formation.
In a reply to state transport minister P Ajay Kumar, Gadkari has reportedly said that the Centre with 31 percent share, yet to bifurcate the APSRTC and has not recognised its division by the state government.
Meanwhile, the Regional Commissioner Provident Fund has issued notices to Managing Director of RTC Sunil Sharma to deposit Rs 760 crore in employees' accounts failing to which heavy penalty will be collected from the RTC management.The government had earlier asked the RTC management to pay Rs 450 crore towards transport tax.
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