Hyderabad General Post Office will retain its Group A status after the Telangana postal department dropped a proposal to downgrade the institution to Group B, bringing relief to postal unions and employees who had opposed the move.
Telangana Chief Postmaster General D.S.V.R. Murthy told Deccan Chronicle that there was no proposal to downgrade the Hyderabad GPO as of Monday. The department’s decision follows opposition from postal unions and representations made to public representatives after details of the proposed change emerged.
The proposal had surfaced on September 26, when AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi wrote to the Union ministry of communications asking it to withdraw the plan. Postal unions subsequently approached MP Raghunandan with their representations against the proposed downgrade.
According to Murthy, the department had initially considered upgrading the Sangareddy postal division into a senior postal division by placing the time-scale officer currently associated with Hyderabad GPO there. The proposal was intended to be implemented without creating new posts, but unions opposed the arrangement.
The withdrawal is significant for the staff working at Hyderabad GPO. Postal unions said the decision would benefit about 150 clerical employees, 80 postmen and nearly 30 Class IV employees. They welcomed the department’s decision and thanked the postal administration for dropping the proposal.
The Hyderabad Philatelic and Hobbies Society also welcomed the move. Society secretary Sagi Srinivas Raju described the decision as positive for the institution, which has a long administrative and public-service history in the city.
The Hyderabad GPO building was inaugurated on August 20, 1966, by Satyanarayan Sinha, then minister for communications and parliamentary affairs. It completed its golden jubilee in 2016. The building was modernised as a General Post Office on August 8, 1985, and dedicated to the public by N.T. Rama Rao, who was then chief minister of Andhra Pradesh.
The decision comes against the wider operational scale of the postal network in Telangana. Telangana Circle has 36 head post offices, 759 sub post offices and 5,424 branch post offices. These are supported by 6,514 departmental employees and 10,623 Gramin Dak Sevaks.
The department has also issued 1,86,202 appointment offers through 17 Rozgar Mela tranches, including 1,51,348 offers to Gramin Dak Sevaks. Within Telangana Circle, 1,272 candidates received appointment offers, of whom 1,123 were Gramin Dak Sevaks. The postal department has not announced any further proposal to alter Hyderabad GPO’s status.
