A day after President’s Rule was imposed in Andhra Pradesh, Governor E.S.L.Narasimhan on Sunday made it clear that breakdown of law and order would be not tolerated.
“We will go all out and anybody who breaks the law cannot escape,” Mr. Narasimhan said at a press conference at the Raj Bhavan. The Governor laid down his priorities for governance for the next couple of months focussing mainly on maintenance of peace and order and assured that the ongoing social welfare programmes would continue to get due priority.
Specifically referring to maintenance of peace and order, Mr. Narasimhan said unless law and order was established developmental programmes would take a backseat. “Let there not be disruption in public life,” he said adding that developmental programmes would reach the last mile.
He also had a word of advice to the bureaucrats stating that he would expect them to visit the districts. “I am not satisfied by statistical information,” he said pointing out that monitoring of programmes would become important task. Another focus area, he said was to State investor friendly. Asserting that the State was ‘Swarnabhoomi’, Mr. Narasimhan hoped that the atmosphere would be conducive to attract investments.
The Governor listed out his vision for education stating that quality of higher education was the need of the hour. Admitting that Executive Councils of several universities had not been filled up for a long time, he promised to complete the task by holding talks with the vice-chancellors.
The Governor said that health care needed special attention. “Focus will be on rural medicare,” he said stressing the need for providing affordable healthcare. “An attempt is required to have uniform charges across the State for health care. Hospitals instead of making profits in three years could stretch it to six years,” he said. At the same time, he said agriculture would continue to get fillip. Terming the farming community as ‘annadata’, he hoped that Rabi yield would be bumper despite natural calamity hitting the State. Mr. Narasimhan made a fervent appeal to the media to extend cooperation during this period.
To a question on bifurcation process, he said 15 committees had been set up to look into division of employees, pensions, files and infrastructure. An apex committee would monitor the progress. Replying to another query on politicians coming and meeting him, he said he would be unbiased in his functioning as was evident in the last four years of his stint.
He refused to talk about the letter written by a bureaucrat on giving extension to Chief Secretary and said due procedure was followed. Queried if the decisions of the previous Government would be reviewed, Mr. Narasimhan sought some time. He said he would follow due procedure with regard to the letter written by the former Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy on MLCs to be nominated under the Governor’s quota.