40 more ULBs to come up in State, says Minister

The step would help better planning of the growing panchayats and development of civic amenities

HYDERABAD, TELANGANA, 25/07/2017: Telangana Minister for Information Technology, K.T. Rama Rao addressing the media conference at Assembly in Hyderabad. Photo: K.V.S. Giri

Minister for Municipal Administration and Urban Development K.T. Rama Rao on Tuesday stated that the government was keen to declare as municipalities major panchayats with more than 15,000 population as per 2011 census and the comprehensive household survey taken up across Telangana.

In a video-conference with the district collectors in the presence of Municipal Administration secretary Navin Mittal, Commissioner & Director of Municipal Administration T.K. Sreedevi and others, the Minister also revealed that these steps could lead to formation of at least 40 new urban local bodies which would lead to better planning, administration and execution of civic infrastructure.

Representations

The government has already received representations for converting the likes of major panchayats of Ramayampet, Banswada and Narsapur into municipalities.

There were also several villages which are major panchayats located nearer to the existing urban local bodies and this was leading to variations as well as discrepancies in implementation of welfare schemes, building permissions and so on.

Urbanisation

Mr. Rao pointed out that most major panchayats were rapidly urbanising and merging them with the nearest municipality would bring about uniformity and means to tackle civic issues. Hence, villages lying within three to five kilometeres of an ULB should be merged into the latter.

He detailed the steps to be taken to have an orderly merger without legal issues by passing resolutions in the respective panchayats and take up denotifications with the assistance of the Panchayat Raj Department. Collectors were asked to prepare perspective plans for the proposed mergers and notifications along with civic amenities development to the government.

Ranks

The Minister was also keen on the TS getting as many good ranks as possible in the Swachh Sarvekshan 2018 ranks since it has been fairly successful in campaigns like open defecation free, tree plantation and cleanliness.

While Hyderabad, Warangal and Suryapet had high ranks last year, he wanted more ULBs to improve their rankings and said that an awareness meeting with the respective municipal chairpersons and commissioners would be held soon. Mr. Rao also released a CD prepared by Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI) on the subject.