PC adds no more riders to 14 (F)

HYDERABAD: The impasse over deletion of Clause 14 (f) of the Presidential Order is poised to end after all. Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy was informed by Union Home Minister P Chidambaram that he had signed the relevant file and sent it to the Prime Minister’s Office.Sources in the Chief Minister’s Office said Thursday, “the Chief Minister spoke to the Home Minister this morning. He was told that the file has already been sent to the PMO.’’Clause 14 (f) of the Presidential Order allows the government to treat Hyderabad as a ‘free zone’ to which recruitment can be made from all regions. Its deletion is a major demand of separate Telangana supporters who say it has denied people from the region a fair share of jobs in the state capital. The deletion will clear the way for the conduct of a recruitment exam for 1,293 posts of sub-inspector scheduled for Aug 13-14.The exam was to be held in November last but was postponed when Telangana students and political parties threatened to disrupt it. The government bowed to the pressure and deferred it. The Chief Minister has been intent on not deferring the exam yet again. He turned back a suggestion by Chidambaram that the 14 (f) issue be resolved unanimously by the Assembly before its deletion could be recommended to the President. He said the Assembly had already passed a resolution in March last year recommending deletion.While word on the formal deletion of 14 (f) is awaited from Delhi, the Chief Minister has been besieged by his Cabinet colleagues from Telangana demanding haste. They want cancellation of the exam while he has been firm on going ahead with it. Minister K Venkat Reddy is learnt to have engaged the Chief Minister in a heated argument at the latter’s camp office on Thursday, threatening to quit if the exam went ahead without deletion of 14 (f). The Chief Minister, it is learnt, made it clear that there was no question of postponing it.