The State government is actively working on reorganisation of different government departments with an aim to combine all departments discharging similar functions for ensuring their effective functioning.
The reorganisation is being taken up to ensure that a focussed approach could be adopted for effectively discharging their respective functioning. Officials pointed out that key departments like the Industries, Welfare, Education, Agriculture had been divided into different departments and placed under different head of departments and ministers, thereby leading to avoidable delay in the decision making process.
The Education department for instance has been divided into School and Secondary education, Intermediate, Higher and Technical which were functioning separately. Same is the case with the Agriculture department which is divided into agriculture, marketing, cooperation, seed development authority and other wings and Welfare which is divided into SC, ST, BC, Minority and Women and Child Welfare.
Political convenience
“The departments were segregated on the basis of their functions in the past. However, successive governments in the erstwhile united State split them into different wings owing to political reasons like accommodating more number of people in the Cabinet,” a senior official told The Hindu .
Moreover, there was scope for creating 42 Ministries in the united State even after the constitutional amendment that limited the size of the Cabinet to 15% of the total strength of the Lower House — the Legislative Assembly — as the Assembly strength was 294. “But the size of the Cabinet is limited to a maximum of 18 after the formation of Telangana with 119-member Assembly, prompting the need for reorganising departments so that they can be grouped together,” the official said.
Discussion stage
The proposal is said to be in the discussion stage as of now, but the officials concerned are reported to have submitted a preliminary report to Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao. Officials are hopeful that the Chief Minister would focus on the issue at the time of expansion of his Cabinet, likely to be next month.
