23,000 Telangana Outsourcing Power Workers To Be Regularized

The legal hurdles for the regularization of the services of the outsourced staff working in the electricity organizations have been removed as the petition challenging the regularization of their services has been struck down by the Hyderabad High Court on Tuesday.

With this, the process to regularize the 23,000 persons working in TSGenco, TSTransco, SPDCL and NPDCL has been cleared.

Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao had earlier instructed the electricity department to regularize the services of the staff who had been working for a long time as outsourced employees in the department. Accordingly, the services of these 23,000 persons were regularized by the department, and orders were issued to that effect.

However, the decision was challenged in the High Court. Advocates arguing on behalf of the electricity department explained the reasons and the necessity for regularizing the outsourced staff's services to the court. They brought to the notice of the bench what they felt were the problems being faced by the staff who had been discharging their duties against all odds, and spoke about their skills and the need for regularization. They argued that it was not correct to oppose the human angle in the decision of the state government to regularize their services. These staffers, who had been working hard to supply quality power, had to remain as outsourced employees and be deprived of job security for years together, and that was not fair, teh advocates said.

The plea put forward by the electricity department's advocates was agreed to by the court, which struck down the petition.

Chief Minister KCR expressed his happiness over the decision of High Court in striking down the petition filed against the regularization. KCR said that it was in the spirit of being human that the government took the decision to regularize the services of the outsourced employees, and it was a great development that the High Court supported the decision. The CM also spoke to TSGenco and TSTransco CMD D Prabhakar Rao and instructed him to regularize the services of outsourced staff, recognize them as regular employees, decide on the pay scales and implement the PRC for them, too.

Prabhakar Rao too expressed happiness over the High Court's judgement. He said that henceforth all the 23,000 outsourced staffers would be treated as regular employees.