Pilgrims from Telangana state Stopped at Tirupati by The employees of the AP Tourism Department in Tirupati. AP employees stopped Telangana State pilgrims from going to Tirumala. The Superintendent of police had to interfere to let the pilgrims go.
AP employees claim their actions are ‘retaliation’ for their employees not being allowed into the Himayatnagar’s ‘Tourism House’, which served as corporate headquarters for tourism dept in erstwhile composite AP.
While AP employees continue to claim the ‘Tourism House’ as ‘their office’, nothing can be farther than the truth. AP tourism employees and the media continue to spread the propaganda that AP tourism employees are not allowed to enter ‘their own office’ in Himayatnagar, Hyderabad. But the fact is that GO No. 228 dated May 30, 2014, issued by erstwhile AP itself, allocated the Himayatnagar office to Telangana while allocating AP the Commissioner of Tourism office located at Tank bund. These two offices were supposed to serve as head offices for both states since June 2, Telangana formation day. Here is the GO clearly allocating the the tankbund office to AP
However, according to TS employees, AP employees continued to work from the Himayatnagar office and were postponing their shifting under some pretext or the other. Finally, they promised to move out by Sept 8, a word which they didn’t keep. Tired with the attitude of AP employees and feeling suffocated with lack of space, the TS employees have even protested against Chandana Khan, the AP Toursim’s special chief secretary some days ago.
TS employees are demanding AP employees move to their allocated office in Tank Bund. With no response from AP Govt, TS employees started locking up the Himayatnagar office to force the AP employees to work from their tankbund office.
AP employees were not just refusing to move to the tank bund office but now even started stopping pilgrims, including women and elderly, in Tirupati. If such incident happened in Hyderabad, all hell would have broke loose on how Telangana is discriminating against Andhras and why Governor rule is the immediate need of the hour!
Only 3 days ago, an MLA from Khammam has been beaten badly by Eluru MP Maganti Babu. The Andhra media not just blocked that news but continues to be shockingly partisan even in issues of Government employees, like in this case.
Source:TT
