The final allocation of All India Service (AIS) officers between AP and Telangana by the Department of Personnel and Training with the publication of extraordinary gazette last Thursday has sealed the fate of some IAS and IPS officers forever who wished to serve in States of their choice against their provisional allocation.
“Except for a couple of officers, including Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation Commissioner Somesh Kumar, whose fate still hangs in balance as his case is pending with the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT), it’s all over for others hoping for placement in Telangana as they are left with no other choice but to resign to their fate now,” a senior officer in the know of developments remarked. Allocation of Principal Agriculture Secretary Poonam Malakondaiah, a couple of district Collectors and a few others, who are now serving in Telangana, to Andhra Pradesh makes another reshuffle of officers in Telangana soon inevitable, the officer noted.
Chief Secretary unhappy
Chief Secretary of Telangana government, Rajiv Sharma, expressed unhappiness over legislators not getting written answers by concerned departments for questions raised in the Assembly during zero hour.
He told a meeting of Principal Secretaries ahead of the commencement of budget session of the Assembly that answers to questions in earlier sessions were still pending with the departments. Even where the answers were furnished, they were sketchy and did not contain details.
Getting written answers to zero hour mention in the Assembly is a perennial problem that legislators have faced for decades. The Ministers who are designated to take the questions merely tell the House that they have noted down points raised by the members and that the government will take required action. But, as Mr. Sharma noted, the officials take their own sweet time.
Pawan Kalyan
feels let down
Actor Pawan Kalyan is a bitter man these days. He feels let down by the BJP and Telugu Desam for whom his campaigning in the last elections made a lot of difference. The Jana Sena leader is sore that the NDA government has not honoured its promise of granting special category status to Andhra Pradesh even nine months after the State was bifurcated. He is equally unhappy with the AP Chief Minister, N. Chandrababu Naidu’s ways of land pooling for the capital region to the detriment of farmers.
The actor-turned-politician has started batting for the cause of the ‘poor farmers’ and makes no bones about his anger at the land acquisition policies of the government.
AP officers face housing problem!
Some of the IAS officers who are allotted to Andhra Pradesh are faced with a serious problem of residential accommodation in Hyderabad. The Telangana government is making arrangements for accommodation to its own officers while setting aside the requests from their AP counterparts. A Principal Secretary of AP complained that they got house rent allowance of only Rs. 20,000 a month which was hardly enough to pay rent for a decent flat in a city like Hyderabad. Invariably, one would have to find accommodation on the outskirts within that budget.
A litmus test
for police
The conduct of the budget sessions of AP and Telangana Assemblies simultaneously is proving to be a litmus test for police officials.
To ensure smooth conduct of the sessions, the city police have availed the services of their AP counterparts to man the old Assembly building where AP Assembly session is being conducted. They will provide the peripheral security to the Assembly.
– Reporting by B. Chandrashekhar,
N. Rahul, J.S. Ifthekhar,
Y. Mallikarjun
& Asif Yar Khan
