The growing proximity of the AP NGOs Association President P Ashok Babu with Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu has led to intense turf war within Andhra Pradesh government employees, which led to vertical split among them.
Ahead of the elections to be held for AP NGOs, the breakaway group held a state-level conference in Tirupati to float a new Joint Action Committee with the like minded associations as its active partners, led by Bopparaju Venkateswarlu, president of the AP Revenue Services Association.
Most of the affiliated bodies of AP NGOs, representing each government department are said to be in the breakaway group. They are accusing that Ashok Babu has become an agent of the government which deprives the government employees of their due in several aspects.
They made it clear that they were forced to float a parallel body to defend the rights and safeguard the privileges of employees only due to attitude of Ashok Babu, Presently, he is heading the employees JAC as chairman in his capacity as the president of the AP NGOs association.
Bopparaju claims that they are enjoying support of nearly 80 associations representing various departments. The JAC is an umbrella of 105 associations. Ashok Babu is seems to be earned more enemies than friends during his stint as the JAC chairman and NGOs Association president, for his reported failure to take the fellow employees on board and give them an outlet.
His rivals are accusing him that he failed to take up the problems such as hike in wages of contract workers, house sites for employees who shifted to Amaravati from Hyderabad, among others, with the government for solution effectively.
However, Ashok Babu strongly refuted these allegations and maintained that the JAC has succeeded in its mission to ensure wage fixation for state government employees at par with their counterparts in the central government.
He particularly took credit for the 43 per cent fitment benefit offered by the government as part of wage revision. He also stated that the government has offered DA hike recently only because of his efforts. However, he is suspecting vested interests are engineering a split to weaken the militancy of government employees.
