Waving 30-yr-old order, YSR transfers 3,000 cops to please TRS

State Home Minister K Jana Reddy told reporters that orders for the postings would be issued on February 11. To start with, only those in the rank of ASI, head constable and constable would be moved out.

Reddy said a similar exercise would be done in the case of sub-inspectors, saying 16 of them have already ‘‘voluntarily returned to their native districts’’.

To justify its decision, the government dug out a 1975 Presidential order and said the appointments—they include 2,120 constables, 236 head constables and 14 ASIs in Hyderabad and 77 constables, 14 head constables and two ASIs in Cyberabad—were in violation of the order.

Questions are already being asked why these appointments were valid all these years.

But the Reddy government is sticking to GO 610, issued on the basis of the Presidential order, which wanted regional balance in recruitment by filling 80 per cent of the posts with locals and the rest by non-locals. The government says non-locals were recruited in excess of the prescribed quota.

And now, for the record, the government says all personnel will be ‘‘adjusted in their native districts by creating supernumerary posts so that their seniority is not affected.’’ Vacancies arising out of the transfers would be filled either by undertaking fresh recruitment or by deputation of personnel from other regions till new appointments are made.