Rejig plan under BJP surgical attack

BJP spokesperson Krishna Saagar Rao says it will only lead to increased bureaucracy, red-tape and wasteful expenditure

• Says increased number of districts leads to red-tapism and wasteful expenditure
• Entire reorganisation process is a disaster in the making

Hyderabad: Opposition BJP slammed the proposed move of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) government in the State to substantially increase the number of districts, saying it would only lead to increased bureaucracy, red-tape and wasteful expenditure.

“We today live in a world where technology connects all, even rural landscape and micro-administrative blocks. Increasing districts through proper plan to a few more for governance-related reasons is acceptable, but jumping from 10 districts to 30-plus raises more than just eyebrows,” BJP spokesperson, Krishna Saagar Rao said.

Forming these many districts only led to increased bureaucracy, red-tape, wasteful expenditure, maximum government and minimum governance, he alleged. The draft government notification issued on August 22 proposed to add 17 new districts, from the existing 10. Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao had formed the committee led by MP K Keshava Rao to examine the possibility of creating four more new districts - Gadwal, Jangaon, Sircilla and Asifabad, and asked it to submit a report by Friday afternoon.

The State government had said new districts would come into existence from Dussehra festival (October 11). Krishna Saagar Rao said a few years ago, prior to the advent of robust internet-enabled connectivity, network-enabled citizen services, the chunking of administrative units to smaller size could be looked at with a different perspective of good governance, that too with conservative, systemic, scientific and democratic methodology.

“The same process today looks quite unwarranted, financially unviable and administratively primitive with (the availability now of) numerous technologies as service delivery enablers and cheaper last-mile connectivity tools,” he said. The BJP spokesperson said governments today could provide almost all services without inconvenience to the common man through technology and electronic interfaces.

“Physical proximity to administrators for better citizen services is a thing of past and completely obsolete in today's context, Krishna Saagar Rao said. He noted that nine of Telangana’s 10 districts were rated under-developed by the 14th Finance Commission.

“Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao’s thoughtless initiative will bounce the number of districts from 10 at once to 30-plus and will only result in creating 20 more poor and under-developed districts. The entire process is a huge disaster in making,” Rao said.