Hyderabad: Telangana Deputy Chief Minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka announced in the early hours of Saturday, April 25, that the state government will hold elections to the recognised Telangana State Road Transport Corporation (TGSRTC) unions and implement an 11 per cent increase in pay under the 2017 Pay Revision Commission (PRC).
He also announced the formation of a joint committee of officers and union leaders to chart out the process of merging TGSRTC with the state government — a first and long-awaited step toward a decades-old demand. Remaining issues, he added, could be resolved through dialogue between unions and management.
A full day of negotiations
Talks began at around 10 am on Friday, April 24, at the Dr BR Ambedkar Telangana State Secretariat in Hyderabad, where TGSRTC union leaders met a high-level committee of IAS officers. The discussions then continued with a ministerial committee, stretching well past midnight in a gruelling 12-hour session spanning three phases.
Officers reviewed all 32 demands raised by RTC workers point by point. Of these, 29 were reportedly accepted. The three contentious demands, which are the merger with the state government, implementation of the 2021 and 2025 PRC and re-recognition of RTC unions with fresh elections, required policy decisions at a higher level.
On the merger, the government announced that a Cabinet sub-committee would be formed. Officials also noted that fully meeting the 31 worker-related demands would place a burden of approximately Rs 34,000 crore on the state exchequer, and requested more time for phased implementation.
Key outcomes
Among the demands that received a positive response was that RTC drivers and technicians in the Greater Hyderabad zone will not be transferred and may be deployed to operate private electric buses introduced in the zone. The government also agreed to compassionate appointments under the breadwinner scheme on a permanent basis with regular pay scales, rather than the existing contract system.
TGSRTC Joint Action Committee (JAC) leaders called on workers to resume duties and celebrate at their depots. One leader described it as a historic day, saying union elections were the only means through which workers could effectively raise their concerns with management.
Tribute to Shankar Goud
The ministerial meeting, attended by ministers Ponnam Prabhakar, Sridhar Babu, Adluri Laxman, Jupally Krishna Rao, and G Vivek Venkataswamy, as well as Chief Secretary K Ramakrishna Rao and a four-member IAS committee, began with a moment of silence for Shankar Goud — the RTC driver who died by suicide in connection with the ongoing agitation.
Bhatti Vikramarka expressed deep regret over Goud’s death, noting that it occurred while he and Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy were away on election campaign duties in Tamil Nadu. “Any issue can be resolved through discussion. Nobody is our enemy — I assure you we will not treat workers the way the previous government did,” he said, referencing the 55-day strike in 2019 under the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) administration.
Union leaders acknowledged the current government’s steps, including clearing 2013 bonds, implementing the 2017 PRC, paying pending Dearness Allowances and reinstating 270 workers previously dismissed, while maintaining that they would not accept anything less than 30 per cent fitment under the 2021 and 2025 PRC.
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