Telangana's date with new districts

HYDERABAD: The Telangana government will announce creation of 13 or 14 new districts on June 2, the state formation day. Simultaneously, the government will also announce creation of about 40 new mandals.

Chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao announced the government’s intention on creation of the new districts and mandals on Thursday.
The new units will ensure better service delivery for people with further decentralization of state’s administrative machinery, the chief minister said. The announcement was made after a detailed discussion on the issue at the chief minister’s camp office where it was also announced that the deadline for the new district administrative set ups to begin functioning would be either August 15, the Independence Day or October 11 on the occasion of Dasara festival.

The creation of new districts is in line with the move by the central government to increase the number of assembly constituencies as provided for in the Andhra Pradesh Bifurcation Act 2014.

Chandrasekhar Rao said that as part of the district wise reorganization of the administrative set up, the strength of officials will be increased. For instance, one revenue divisional officer will be appointed to oversee about 8 or 10 mandals, he said. Thursday’s meeting was attended among others by deputy chief minister and revenue minister Mohd Mahmood Ali, deputy speaker of the assembly Padma Devender Reddy, planning board vice-chairman S Niranjan Reddy, chief secretary Rajiv Sharma, principal secretary to the chief minister S Narsing Rao, chief minister’s political secretary S Subhash Reddy.

Chandrasekhar Rao, referring to the demands from various quarters about creating new districts, said the final decision will need to be taken based primarily on administrative decentralization that will ensure prompt service deliver to people.

The chief minister also instructed his officials to begin making plans for physical infrastructure such as offices at the proposed district headquarters. Ideally, there should be one centralized office complex where all departments can be housed, he added.