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Umika Pidaparthy

India's twin states part wayswith discord

Sharing resources between Telangana and parent state of AndhraPradesh becomes sore point as bifurcation is completed.

Last updated: 02 Jun 2014 14:20

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Telangana's backers have been spearheading the movement for a separate state for over three decades [AFP]Anyone visiting the southern Indian city of Hyderabad today would be hit by a riot of pink. Almost everytraffic intersection and city centre in the state capital has been adorned with the colours of the political partythat fought for the birth of India's 29th state, Telangana.

Around 10 districts have been alloted to Telanagana and 13 will remain with Andhra Pradesh [Al Jazeera]

At the stroke of midnight on June 2, supporters of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) celebrated theformal bifurcation of southern state of Andhra Pradesh with an array of fireworks and cheers of "JaiTelangana" (Hail Telangana).

"This is a golden moment for us and the state of Telangana which is supposed to become the 29th stateand involves sacrifices," Syed Salim Pasha, a student from Osmania University in Hyderabad, told theReuters news agency.

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Telangana's backers have been spearheading the movement for a separate state for over three decadesagainst what they alleged as the economic and administrative dominance by the well-off southern region,collectively called Seemandhra.

Their dream was finally realised after the previous Congress party-led federal government passed a law tocreate Telangana amid widespread opposition from the residual part of Andhra Pradesh.

But in the week leading up to the division, the challenge of moving government employees and sharing thewater resources, seems telling of the tumultuous relationship between the two sister states.

Employee split

The division of employees was the thorniest issue, as more than 47,000 government employees found outtheir status only on Monday, while the head of the future governments have indulged in rhetorics.

Things heated up after K Chandrasekhar Rao, the Telangana chief minister and one time protégé ofChandrababu Naidu, the Andhra Pradesh chief minister-designate, said that there was no room for

Seemandhra employees under his government.

Mixed reactions to India's new state.

"How can a Telangana government, with a Telangana chief minister and a Telangana chief secretary havepeople from Seemandhra working for them?...If they still insist and force some 50 Seemandhra employeeson us, we won't let them inside the gates of the secretariat. Or we will transfer them to some god forsakenplace."

The difficulty of dividing up 1,865 employees of the secretariat, about 7,500 in various other departments,and countless zonal employees across Andhra Pradesh’s 13 districts and Telangana’s 10 districts was notmade easy by emotional workers' unions wanting lines to be drawn.

"Employees were the initiators of the Telangana movement then in 1969 and now," M Narender Rao,president of the Telangana Secretariat Employees Association, told Al Jazeera. "So, it is fair to ask theAndhra employees to go to their state and serve their government."

A person's nativity is calculated based on whether they were registered as locals or non-locals in theprevious government and whether or not they were educated in Telangana.

It has become a dilemma especially for long-time residents of IT-hub of Hyderabad, which will be the sharedcapital between the two for a period of 10 years.

U Murali Krishna, president of Andhra Pradesh Secretariat Employees Association, told Al Jazeera thatemployees should have the option to choose the state they want to work in because the definition of nativityhas blurred in the past 60 years, an idea that has received heated responses.

However, KC Rao's vision for a definitive split may not be that simple. Officials involved in the divisionprocess told Al Jazeera that a complete vertical division was impossible as it would create a vacuum andbring a department’s work to a halt.

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Source: Al Jazeera

So a temporary solution - divide up the workforce despite nativity, something the vice chairman of theEmployees Joint Action Committee, Madhusudhan Reddy, said was dangerous.

"Such a division forces the employees to work in the state he does not belong to and this creates tension,[especially] if the employees occupy key position in a particular department," Reddy told Al Jazeera.

Polavaram dispute

Meanwhile, Andhra Pradesh's Naidu, who was an election ally of the Bharatiya Janata Party that won thenational elections, was seen hobnobbing with top officials in New Delhi and laid out his agenda last week.

K Chandrasekhar Rao, who was sworn in as Telangana's first chief minister on June 2, has made it clear thatSeemandhra employees have to move. [Mrigakshi Shukla/ Al Jazeera]

He met Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week, demanding a special financial package for the state. Hisgovernment will have to undertake huge infrastructure projects as most of the industries and educationalinstitutions are lost to Hyderabad.

Naidu has also asked the federal government to expedite the Polavaram Project, a multi-irrigation dam,which has become sore point between the two states.

Seemandhra sees the project as a way to tackle its irrigation problems once its access to the Godavari andKrishna river is interrupted by Telangana, which holds the catchment area. TRS has opposed the project asit threatens to submerge 136 villages in Telangana.

Pentapati Pulla Rao, an economist and an activist, said that the problem lies with both sides. He said thatthe project, which was conceived in the 1940s during the British rule, is outdated as it does not take into theaccount the settlements, and that KC Rao did not raise the issue when the bill to bifurcate the state waspassed.

According to PP Rao, the only solution would be to consult experts, and for Telangana and Seemandhra toframe the situation from the perspective of the 300,000-400,000 people who will be displaced.

He said, so long as the two chief ministers are at each other's throats, neither state will see development.

"Both governments should sit together and discuss in an amicable way," told Al Jazeera. "Otherwise thefuture is not going to be as cosy as they want."

Reporting from Hyderabad by JN Raju.

Follow Umika Pidaparthy on Twitter: @UmikaP

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