Norms for Telangana nativity likely in three days

The Telangana government has scrapped the existing fee reimbursement scheme and replaced it with FAST, with an aim to provide fee reimbursement and scholarships only to those students whose parents/ancestors were residents of Telangana prior to November 1, 1956, when the Hydera-bad state was merged with Andhra to form Andhra Pradesh.

Chief secretary Rajeev Sharma on Wednesday held a high-level meeting with the principal secretaries of various departments to draft the nativity guidelines to avail the FAST scheme.

Principal secretary of panchayat raj department Raymond Peter, who had played a crucial role in streamlining the fee reimbursement scheme in united AP by making the entire process online to check irregularities in the implementation during his tenure as principal secretary of Social Welfare department between 2009 and 2014 , has been roped in again to draft the guidelines for FAST.

The Chief Minister had constituted a high-level committee with senior IAS officers to draft the guidelines for FAST. He had directed the committee to come out with guidelines which would ensure that only genuine Telangana students received the benefits and no genuine Telangana students should be left out just because they could not prove their nativity based on the 1956 cut-off year.

Officials said this was the first meeting of the high-level committee and a consensus has been arrived on nearly 60 per cent of the guidelines and the rest would be taken up in the next three days.

Unless these guidelines are approved and notified by the government, the counselling for Eamcet, Icet, Edcet etc. cannot start as the government needs to give clarity to students over who are eligible for FAST and who are not.