“The advice of the Attorney General cannot be the birth of section 8 in the states,” Telangana officials stated.

Section 8 is one such issue which is currently being the hot topic of the dual Telugu states. “There are loopholes in the state bifurcation law, that is currently saving us in the state,” the Telangana officials opined.  
 
“Governor has to act according to the central government directions, regarding the section 8, but he has no powers to act on his own. A clause called ‘Power to make rules’ has to be introduced in the law and only then, the implementation can be done effectively,” the officials specified.
   
AP government counter

On the other side, the AP officials say, “there is no one, who can stop the implementation of section 8 in the state, when the Attorney General specified about it. There is already enough clarity about the Governor’s powers in the section 8. There is no need of introducing operational guidelines for this in particular.”

On the special request of the Governor, Attorney General clearly studied the section 8 and said that, Governor would possess the powers of implementation of section 8, being the joint official for both the states. “If this section is not valid, then even the state bifurcation section would also be not valid,” the AP officials further stated.

However the implementation or cancellation of the section is yet to be known. The decision has an every chance of awakening a new war among the states.

What is Section 8 all about?

Section 8 of Andhra Pradesh Reorganization Act, 2014, deals with the responsibility of the Governor to protect the residents of Hyderabad, being the common capital of both the states.

The Governor has an every responsibility of safeguarding the interests like life, liberty and property of the people, residing in the city.

To be in particular, the law and order, internal securities, and also the security of the various installations and management and allocation of the government buildings in the common capital area, are the responsibilities, where the governor has to bear on his head. However, he would be assisted by two advisors, who are appointed by the central government.      

To put it simple, Section 8 is all about granting the special powers to the governor to ensure proper security in Hyderabad, the shared capital of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, for 10 years. To address the concerns of people hailing from Andhra and Rayalaseema but residing in Hyderabad, which is common capital, the UPA government incorporated the provisions.

The section says, the governor can take his own judgment on the issues relating to law and order, including police transfers in the shared capital. However, such judgment can be made only after consulting the council of ministers of Telangana.       

Frequently, the police commissioners of Hyderabad, Cyberabad and the SP of the neighboring district of Ranga Reddy should meet the governor and submit the reports on law and order.  

Section 8 states that, the governor’s decision will be final. No one has the authority to question his decision later.
 
The TDP alleged that, the phones of Andhra Pradesh state officials along with the Chief Minister of the state Chandrababu Naidu were tapped by Telangana agencies with the support of the state government. Governor ESL Narasimhan was not only unaware about it, but even chose to ignore.” This led to the protest of TDP MLAs.

Andhrawishesh view:

The TDP officials are expecting fruits out of section 8, regarding the cash for vote scam. But the scam is nowhere related to the section 8, as the investigation is being done by the ACB court, which does not come under the purview of the Section.

In fact, there is no such gain or loss to the dual state governments, even if the section 8 is implemented, the only thing is, KCR would lose powers on transferring or posting of the police of Hyderabad and Cyberabad commissionerates.

On the other side, the common people absolutely would not have any impact, though the section gets implemented or not.