Owaisi Urges Centre to Retain Hyderabad GPO’s Group-A Status

AIMIM president and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi has urged the Centre to withdraw a proposal to downgrade the Hyderabad General Post Office (GPO) from Group-A to Group-B and merge it with the Hyderabad City Division.

In a letter to Union Minister of State for Communications Pemmasani Chandrasekhar, Owaisi sought the continuation of the Hyderabad GPO as an independent Group-A post office, citing its historical importance, substantial workload and the range of postal and public services it provides to people in the city.

Owaisi said the Hyderabad GPO has played a key role in the city’s postal network for more than a century. He also pointed out that the Telangana Philatelic Bureau operates from the GPO and said such factors should be taken into account before any decision is taken on its administrative status.

He also appealed to Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia to reconsider the proposed restructuring after taking into account the nature and scale of operations at the Hyderabad GPO. Owaisi stressed that the office should continue to function as an independent Group-A institution.

The issue has also been the subject of administrative and legal proceedings in the past. According to ANI, records placed before the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) during proceedings in 2021 referred to a proposal to downgrade the Hyderabad GPO.

Those records indicated that, under revised norms, the Postal Department had assessed that 11,000 points were required for retaining Group-A status, while the institutional review had recorded 7,343 points. There had also been a proposal to identify additional staff positions and link them with other postal divisions.

However, ANI noted that these figures relate to an earlier organisational review and may not reflect the GPO’s present workload or staffing position.

The Hyderabad GPO currently handles traditional postal services as well as parcels, savings and financial services, insurance and other public-facing facilities. Against this backdrop, Owaisi has called for a fresh consideration of both the proposed merger and downgrade, stressing the office’s continuing importance to Hyderabad and Telangana.