KCR's 'real time admn' move hits hurdle?

Hyderabad: Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao's recent announcement on 'real time administration' in the state from August 15 onwards will be delayed due to a plethora of problems including the delay in shifting of the secretariat, lethargic attitude of the bureaucrats to shift to a temporary place in a haste and, most importantly, prolonging staff crunch in the newly-formed districts.

KCR has made an official statement in the state Assembly on July 19 that Telangana is set to witness a real time administration from this Independence Day ensuring redressal of grievances of citizens and achieve inclusive growth by extending all the government welfare and development programmes to the deserved.

The general administration has come to a standstill since December due to a series of elections, including the Assembly, Parliament, grama panchayat, mandal and Zilla Parishads, etc.

KCR, it may be mentioned here, was keen on streamlining the entire administration by bringing in reforms particularly in Panchayat Raj, Municipal Administration, Revenue, Agriculture, Health and Education from August 15.

As part of this exercise, the government has taken several policy decisions like enactment of new Panchayat Raj Act, promulgation of Municipal Ordinance and strengthening of the land revenue system to ensure every farmer get title deeds within a stipulated time, etc.

But in the meantime, the Chief Minister has decided to demolish the existing secretariat building and construct a new one in its place. He ordered that all departments in the secretariat be shifted to BRK Bhavan.

This is where the main hurdle in implementing the real time governance has come up.

The building (BRK Bhavan) is not equipped with necessary infrastructure to house various departments of the general administration.

The government has just started working on remodelling the rooms and provide infrastructure facilities. This is likely to take another 20 days or so. Even Chief Secretary S K Joshi's chamber is not yet ready.

It is being said that the Chief Minister, who reviewed the progress of shifting of the secretariat a few days ago, expressed his displeasure to the Chief Secretary for the delay at a meeting with senior officials.

Joshi who did not like being grilled over it in front of other senior officials, sources say, has decided not to go to his chambers in the secretariat.

On Tuesday, he went to BRK Bhavan only to see that the renovation work at his chambers was still on. He went home and told the officials that he would work from home and would not step into the secretariat till his chamber at BRK Bhavan was ready.

In the absence of the infrastructural facilities, most secretaries are not able to perform their duties efficiently. They could not even instruct the district officials as there was no teleconference facility available.

For instance, KCR decided to enforce 60-day action plan to empower gram panchayats. The schedule was yet to be finalised as Panchayat Secretary Vikas Raj is not confident of the implementation of the action plan with the available skeleton staff in the department.

Similarly, the municipal officials are not fully aware about the provisions of the Ordinance brought into force to strengthen the administration.

Governor ESL Narasimhan had raised some objections on delegating total powers to the state government in finalising the schedule for municipal elections.

Sources said that an MLA had gone to Secretariat on Tuesday but since the officials were busy in shifting, he could not represent his grievance.

In the backdrop of such problems, it has been decided to postpone the implementation of real time governance till the shifting process was completed.