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Telangana Power Generation Corporation Ltd. (TSGENCO) v. Andhra Pradesh Power Generation Corporation Ltd. & Ors.

Miscellaneous Application · 2020 INSC 680Decided 7 Dec 2020
Miscellaneous Application No. 1270 of 2020
Justice Ashok Bhushan · Justice M.R. Shah

Background

After Andhra Pradesh was bifurcated into Telangana and residual Andhra Pradesh, a One-Man Committee was set up to allocate the employees of the erstwhile State's power-generation, transmission and distribution utilities between the two new states. After the Committee submitted its "Concluding Report" in June 2020, a large batch of miscellaneous applications was filed before the Supreme Court, by the power utilities themselves, by employees' associations, and by individual employees and officers, objecting to specific allocations, disputed employee counts, and the methodology the Committee had used.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court went through the Committee's allocation methodology in detail, including disputes over the total number of allocable employees and the ratio used to split them between the two states' utilities. It rejected attempts by parties to introduce fresh employee figures before the Court that had not first been placed before the One-Man Committee, holding that the Committee's allocation could not be reopened on that basis. It upheld the Committee's Concluding Report as final, rejected the main objecting applications filed by the utilities and employee groups (including M.A. No. 1286 and M.A. No. 1287 of 2020), and held that M.A. No. 1270 of 2020, the application registered on the Court's own motion to take up the Concluding Report, which corresponds to this diary number, along with "all other M.A.s," stood disposed of in terms of confirming the Committee's allocation. The Court directed that the One-Man Committee's allocation could not be challenged further by any employee, officer or utility before any other forum, while leaving employees free to separately pursue any salary/allowance disputes before the appropriate forum.

Lesson Learnt

When a specialised committee is set up by court order to resolve a complex administrative exercise like dividing employees between two successor states, its considered findings are generally treated as final and binding on all parties who had the opportunity to place their case before it: a party cannot get a second bite by raising new facts or figures for the first time before the court.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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