His tenure as the Chief Secretary began with the inception of Telangana State and brought with it the challenging responsibility to see it through the issues of bifurcation with Andhra Pradesh.
Tacking issues of administration and re-strategising the development in every sector to cater to the reality of the nascent State was his prime task.
A day before stepping down as the Chief Secretary after about two-and-a-half years, a fairly long tenure with a six-month extension, Mr. Rajiv Sharma described his journey as a roller coaster ride.
The first year was devoted to stabilising the administration, tackling differences over implementation of State Reorganisation Act and initiating reforms and the second year in catapulting the State to No.1 rank from No.13 in the ‘Ease of Doing Business’ and the massive task of reorganisation of districts to bring administration closer to people. “We did this by economising and not creating unnecessary posts”, he said.
Reorganisation blues
“Interpretation of State Reorganisation Act became major bone of contention between the two Telugu States. But I don’t blame anyone as this is the only State where bifurcation involved creation of a new capital for one State. The initial problems were due to difficulty in coming to terms with the reality that though Hyderabad is the common capital, it is under the domain of Telangana”, he obaserved speaking to The Hindu here on Tuesday.
“We started with lot of difficulties. We had a small contingent of officers and a thin cadre of IAS, IPS and IFS officers. Things were in a flux with each officer handling three to four subjects. There was distribution of State-level staff and contentious issues related to it . The issues over division of assets of Schedule IX institutions are still lingering,” he pointed out.
Admitting that the initial period dissipated the energies of the State administration over bifurcation issues, he said once things stabilised, the next issue was monitoring revenue accruals every day. A legacy of burden came to us when we opened our account with accumulated arrears under welfare schemes including fee reimbursement.
Household survey
That was how massive comprehensive household survey - brainchild of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhara Rao - was taken up on a single day to understand where the leakages were and to trim the wasteful expenditure.
The Metro rail project was in substantially good progress though there were some issues related to concessionaire agreement signed in the combined State. Only after Telangana was formed, Metro project was expedited, properties were acquired, demolished and right of way given for the project to speed up the work, he said.
The issues over division of assets of Schedule IX institutions are still lingering,
- Rajiv Sharma,Telangana Chief Secretary.
