Telangana admin to be reset

​Hyderabad: After the formation of 21 new districts in 2016, another gigantic exercise will soon be undertaking in Telangana. The government has taken a decision to form permanent district cadre posts in all departments in all districts, both old and new. Since the advent of new districts, the State government has been faced with a piquant situation of severe shortage of district cadre posts.

In many districts, permanent district cadre posts have not been created, with the result that there is no effective oversight of government programmes. In these districts, the officials have been working on the "order to serve" basis for the last two years. Taking a serious note of this anomaly, the government has taken up a major exercise to strengthen the administration, especially in the new districts.

The decision to consolidate the administration at district level has been taken in the wake of the government’s latest decision to effect a major reshuffle of officials through transfers en masse in all departments, in a week or ten days across the state.

Top officials of the state government said that the department heads had already alerted the Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao and Chief Secretary S K Joshi of possible ‘administrative crisis’ in 21 new and 10 old districts once the officials are transferred to other areas. The department heads stressed that the district cadre posts had been created only in some important departments, mainly Police, Revenue, Health, Education and Panchayat Raj, in the new districts. There are as many as 30 departments functioning without any permanent district cadre posts.

For instance, Motor Vehicle Inspectors (MVIs) have been appointed as in-charge RTA (Road Transport Authority) in all the new districts due to shortage of RTA officials. Most of the MVIs are now insisting on transfers as they have been discharging their duties on deputation only. The transfers will not be possible without an alternative to replace them. Similar is the situation in many departments, namely Roads and Buildings, Planning, Rural Water Supply, Industries, Civil Supplies, Information and Public Relations, Labour and Welfare departments.

It is learnt that most of the government wings have been functioning with skeletal staff in new as well as old districts as the government has not recruited new staff in any district after the reorganisation of the districts. On the contrary, the government has proposed to allow transfers of 50 per cent of the officials (out of total strength) in every wing. If that happens, the functioning of many departments will come to a standstill.

Alarmed by this predicament, officials said, the Chief Minister instructed the Chief Secretary to address the issue of scarcity of staff during the mass transfers, by creating permanent cadre in every district and fill the vacancies through promotions or fresh recruitment on a war-footing. All senior officials are instructed to furnish the details of requirement of cadre strength in their respective departments.