CCSAP Report - Ministry of Home Affairs

elonging to them on the ground that qualified personnel from Telangana were
not available. It is another matter that in the interests of imparting quality
governance, qualified people from Bombay state, Mysore state, and, limitedly,
from other neighbouring states were also brought in to fill in the quality gaps in
the civil and judicial administration. To an extent, such steps were resorted to
even in the law and order administration. The fact that Urdu was the language of
administration and the judiciary in the erstwhile Hyderabad State under the
Nizam as opposed to English, which was used in coastal Andhra, as part of
Madras Presidency, did not help things either and was taken as one of the
reasons for such employment needs to provide better governance. In order to
draw the attention of the Government to their grievances, the people of
Telangana began to organize protest meetings and observed Telangana
Safeguards Day on July 10, 1968.
1.2.19 An agitation began in Telangana in January, 1969, as a
consequence of a High Court judgment holding that the Andhra Pradesh State
Electricity Board did not come under the purview of the Public Employment
(Requirement as to Residence) Act, 1957. It is reported that the agitation and
discontent of the people at large manifested itself when a student in Khammam
went on a hunger strike in January, 1969. By the middle of January, the
agitation gained momentum and spread to other districts and students also got
involved in the movement. While one section of the students demanded full
implementation of “safeguards”, the other section demanded bifurcation of the
state. The non-gazetted officers from Telangana joined the movement with the
demand for the immediate repatriation to coastal Andhra region, of about six
thousand coastal Andhra employees occupying the Telangana posts. The
agitation took a violent turn in certain areas. The state government immediately
responded by convening a meeting of the all party political leaders of the state
on January 18-19, 1969. The two important issues agitating the Telangana
people, namely, the repatriation of coastal Andhra officials from Telangana and
the quantum of surplus revenue of Telangana, were discussed. It was announced
that the quantum of Telangana surpluses would be decided by a senior officer
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