Vijayawada: In yet another twist to the All-India Service (AIS) officers’ allocation between Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) Friday set aside the orders issued by the department of personnel and training (DoPT) allocating IAS officer Siva Sankar Lotheti to Telangana.
The CAT observed that the domicile of Siva Sankar was erroneously considered as Telangana by the Pratyush Sinha and Khandekar committees, which was in violation of approved guidelines.
The CAT bench, comprising judicial member Dr Lata Baswaraj Patne and administrative member Varun Sindhu Kulkaumudi, decided the matter within four months of Lotheti’s petition. The bench directed the DoPT to issue orders allocating Siva Sankar to the Andhra Pradesh cadre within four weeks.
In October 2024, DoPT had issued orders rejecting the representations made by Siva Sankar, C Hari Kiran, and G Srujana for continuing in Andhra Pradesh, and the requests of V Karuna, A Vani Prasad, Ronald Rose, and Amrapali Kata for continuing in Telangana. It had directed all seven officers to report to the cadre they were allocated.
All the officers challenged the orders before CAT, but no interim stay was granted, prompting them to move the high court. The HC also declined any relief, leaving the officers with no option but to report to their allocated cadre, 10 years after the bifurcation of the state.
CAT delivered a judgment in the petition filed by Siva Sankar, holding that his domicile is Andhra Pradesh and directed the DoPT to allot him to AP. Siva Sankar argued that the committee constituted for cadre allocation between Andhra Pradesh and Telangana wrongly considered his domicile as Telangana by taking the address for correspondence into consideration, which was in violation of the guidelines, arbitrary, and illegal. After several rounds of litigation, CAT, which consistently upheld the argument of Siva Sankar, once again ruled in his favour.
The order in Siva Sankar’s petition will have a bearing on other officers as well, as the case of Srujana was also based on the same set of facts. Her address for correspondence was also considered for deciding domicile instead of her place of birth, education, and permanent address mentioned in the UPSC dossier. If Srujana chooses to pursue her petition, she is likely to get the same order as that of Siva Sankar in all probability, but sources close to her claim that she is not interested in coming back to Andhra Pradesh and wants to continue in Telangana.
Interestingly, the case of Amrapali depends on Srujana, as Amrapali chose Telangana under a mutual consent swapping arrangement with Srujana. The case of Amrapali was that the DoPT denied her right for mutual swapping with an officer of the same category and time scale. CAT granted her interim relief in the initial round of litigation, following which Amrapali continued in Telangana until DoPT issued fresh orders following an order by the high court.