The thumb rule that farmers must necessarily possess pattadar passbooks for their agricultural holdings may soon be a thing of the past in Telangana.
For, the government has decided to digitise the contents of the passbooks and create individual database electronically, calling them electronic passbooks.
The government believes that creating electronic passbooks should not be a big problem because it was already updating land records on “Maa Bhoomi Telangana online land records” website.
Coming to the reason for introduction of electronic passbooks, it must be said that the government had a selfish interest in that.
The registration of private lands in the name of government was a major problem in land acquisition for irrigation projects as the farmers had deposited their pattadar passbooks with banks and taken loans.
All those who wanted to sell their lands for the projects did not have the passbooks since they were yet to clear the loans.
In expansion mode
Taking a cue from Telugu Desam Party, the charitable arm in the name of its founder president NTR is also spreading its wings in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh post-bifurcation. The NTR Trust which runs NTR Model School at Gandipet here to provide free education to orphans and children of poor TDP workers has last week opened two schools - one at Viswanathapuram in Geesugonda mandal of Warangal and the other at Challapalli in Vijayawada.
The facility at Gandipet was seen as a big success as it ran classes from one to graduation. The party organised its annual conclave at the school to commemorate the birth anniversary of NTR on several occasions.
On expansion mode, the trust has decided to limit its initiative to enrolling children from classes six to nine only at Viswanathapuram where it rented a closed engineering college for the purpose.
It left out class ten for obvious reason; to start next year.
Bureaucracy acts fast
The Telangana government’s swift response to Sarojini Devi Eye Hospital fiasco that nearly cost 13 people their vision saw it discard eight lakh bottles of saline procured from a Nagpur-based pharmaceutical company which is now under scanner.
On a single day, the government placed a massive order for supply of two lakh bottles of Ringer’s Solution or compound sodium lactate to prevent shortage.
Two well known firms were contracted to deliver to government hospitals one lakh each bottles in Hyderabad and rest of Telangana within a day.
The speed with which the Telangana State Medical Housing and Infrastructure Development Corporation acted in the matter took officials by surprise because the government departments were mostly found lax in executing orders of such large magnitude due to red tape.
From NRIs
to NRTs
Non-Resident Indians is a commonly used term to describe Indians who emigrated to foreign countries temporarily.
But, the Telangana government has decided to call its own people who went abroad Non-Resident Telanganites. It apparently drew inspiration from the department of NORKA (Non-Resident Keralite Affairs) set up by Kerala government.
The Telangana government has also decided to set up a department for NRTs for a focussed attention on their grievances. Presently, their issues are dealt by General Administration Department, which is burdened with over a dozen subjects.
N. RAHUL, M. RAJEEV, ROHIT P.S., & YUNUS Y. LASSANIA
