Sabita Indra Reddy struggling to keep up image of department

Hyderabad: Call it paradoxical or otherwise since her appointment as the State Education Minister, Sabita Indra Reddy has been struggling to keep the image of her department and the government up.

For the past two months, she has been touring villages and towns, laying foundation stones for and inaugurating new school buildings under the 'Mana Vuru-Mana Badi', and 'Mana Badi-Mana Basti' programmes. After the then State Education Minister Kadiam Srihari, she is the only one actively touring and visiting places as Education minister.

Wherever she goes, Sabita highlights how Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao has taken up the Mana-Vuru-Mana Badi; Mana Basti-Mana Badi programme like a 'yagna'. Also, how does the government intend to spend Rs 7,289 crore to improve infrastructure in 26,000 schools across the State, besides starting English medium to fulfill the aspirations of the parents to get their children educated in English.

The minister toured the neighboring Maharashtra. along with Women and Child Welfare and Tribal Welfare Minister Satyavathi Rathod. leading an official team. To take stock of how the Maharashtra government has been handling Bal Anand Bhavan under the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) project. providing nutritious food to students and kits to post-partum mothers visiting the Anganwadi's to take stock of feasibility of replicating the best practices back home.

However, all the hard work put in by her seems to get a beating. The reason is repeated incidents of food-poisoning cases one after another, in the welfare schools leading to hospitalisation of students.

The latest is the minister reportedly monitoring the progress of delivery of her promises to students of IIIT, Basara, on a daily basis. The university authorities have warned against any outside interference in the on-campus issues of students would be dealt with seriously. After all the tough talk, to her shock more than ten students from the E1 and E2 hostels of IIIT-Basara were hospitalised on Wednesday, reportedly a repeat incident of food poisoning on the campus.