Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao stressed on participatory development involving people, officials and elected representatives and said their collective effort was the secret of success of countries and States that performed exceedingly well.
Inaugurating the two-day Collectors’ Conference here on Friday, Mr. Rao asked the senior officials not to confine themselves to their respective departments, but work as a team with others in the government.
Departments were created for administrative convenience, but the government was one umbrella organisation which was expected to deliver services to public on a common platform.
Departmentalisation isolated people as they felt that the government was inaccessible owing to different layers of administration. This was the major reason for people coming in conflict with the government.
Laying down the priorities of the government, Mr. Rao asked the Collectors to adopt “out of the box” methods in land acquisition for industrial development. They must stabilise land bank which was crucial for investments.
On the power front, Mr. Rao said the Telangana government had belied all expectations that the State was headed for dark days after bifurcation. It gave uninterrupted supply even to farm sector. Impressed by the position, a delegation of MRF told him on Thursday that the industry was pleased to invest more in the State. The country’s largest Ultra Mega Power Project was going to come up at Damaracherla in Nalgonda district where land acquisition had already begun.
The Chief Minister said the government had taken the water grid programme as a challenge as all advanced nations had given priority to safe drinking water as a medium of development.
He also said that the State was endowed with immense potential to store water in its minor irrigation sources, a fact recognised by Bachawat Tribunal as far back as in 1974.
They had a storage capacity of 265 tmc ft to irrigate 15 lakh acres. But, the storage dwindled due to negligence by successive governments.
