The employees of the Public Relations Department in Hyderabad are unhappy with the previous government’s decision to promote LLR Kishore Babu, who is from Andhra Pradesh, against the rules. They are urging the Chief Secretary to revoke the promotion and return him to his previous position as Chief Information Engineer (CIE).
According to officials from the Public Relations Wing, two Joint Director positions were upgraded to Additional Directors in September 1992. However, this upgrade was intended only for Joint Directors of the PR wing, not for the Radio Engineer.
In October 1992, the government issued Adhoc Rules in AP Information Service Rules to create a temporary position of Additional Director. Since then, promotions have been given to nine Joint Directors as Additional Directors before the bifurcation, and one Joint Director after the bifurcation.
The employees pointed out that LLR Kishore Babu and his predecessors never claimed their eligibility for promotion until after the bifurcation. They believe that if he was eligible, he would have claimed it earlier like the Joint Directors who joined later.
During the bifurcation, the department should have had one post of CIE, but they ended up with two. As a result, Telangana got one post and the second person was posted in Andhra Pradesh. LLR Kishore Babu, who is from Andhra Pradesh, was allocated to Telangana. He approached the High Court to be considered for promotion to the post of CIE. However, he was promoted to Additional Director without any amendments to the service rules.
Recently, the AP High Court issued an interim order stating that promotions to the post of Radio Engineer (now CIE) are on hold and referred to it as an “inferior category.” The court also upheld GO 397, which omitted the feeder category of CIE for promotions to Additional Director.
