Centre’s advice being slighted by TS govt.

March 30, 2015 12:00 am | Updated 03:30 pm IST - HYDERABAD:

The Centre and Telangana government are pulling in different directions in the implementation of Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (SSA) programme. In spite of repeated appeals by the Centre to not appoint officers from departments other than education to monitor the SSA, the Telangana government has posted quite a few Deputy Collectors of revenue as project officers at district level. Recently, the government even appointed another Deputy Collector of revenue as Assistant State Project Director. The POs were seen as a parallel institution to DEOs and opposed by several teachers’ organisations. As its instructions went unheeded, the Centre stopped releasing salaries to them from July last. But, the government met their salary bill by diverting funds from other heads of SSA.

An apparently inadvertent mistake on part of the lower rung staff of Revenue Department left the Telangana government embarrassed last week. Taking strict note of it, the government suspended a Section Officer and terminated the service of a woman data entry operator employed on outsourcing basis. An Assistant Section Officer was also transferred. The staff uploaded an old government order increasing the VAT on petrol and diesel on the government website. As soon as the order was noticed on the website, television channels started questioning the need to increase VAT as the government hiked taxes only in January. Shocked by the developments, the government immediately withdrew the order from the website and issued a clarification that no such hike was made.

Key functionaries of the Telangana government, including the Chief Minister, had repeatedly pointed out in the initial days of the formation of the State that they were unable to issue any order on a proper letterhead in the absence of an official emblem. Noted artist Laxman Aeley designed Telangana government’s official emblem within the first fortnight of June last. The emblem has an iconic Kakatiya arch within an inner circle and contains the image of Charminar which was carefully incorporated between the pillars of the arch. Following a controversy, the words ‘Satyameva Jayate’ in Deva Nagari were scripted inside the inner circle a couple of weeks later. With such significance accorded to the official emblem, one would think that it would be in the official gazette long ago. Strangely, official sources stated that the gazette notification on the emblem was issued only last week.

The stage is now set for division of State-level officers between Telangana and AP. Interestingly, the one year term of C.R. Kamalanathan panel tasked with this job expired on Sunday. However, government has given the extension up to October 15, the date by which the final list of the officers is supposed to be submitted. Mr. Kamalanathan proceeded on a ten-day leave from Sunday although he is supposed to complete the temporary allotment of officers by June. All eyes are on the Kamalanathan committee which is given the schedule for completion of its job.

(Reporting by N. Rahul,

Asif Yar Khan,

B. Chandrashekhar

and J.S. Ifthekhar)

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